majestic

Well, as the saying goes, one never stops learning new things. I actually had no idea English has special grammar to express regrets.

Clerics have like 5 level 9 spells. Eh... Just finished one of the Bald Hilltop invasions. The first fight in the game (on normal) that I actually had to adapt my cleric's spellbook for, but that's what you get when you face enemies that spam paralyzing attacks at you in a frequency that even the best saving throws can't keep up. Bonus points for Freedom of Movement being the apparently only buff spell that has no higher level communal offshoot. Le sigh.

Since you'll be restarting - we've stated that before but it bears repeating, do yourself a favor and whenever a main quest comes up, leave everything else unattended and do it immediately unless you're 100% sure it will make you cross into a new month without you being able to go back to your kingdom in that time. I'd estimate a good two weeks is mostly enough to deal with everything and come back fast enough, provided you don't dally. Then you can assign advisors and spend the rest of the month on more exploration, then deal with the kingdom building in the meantime. Everything else will just give you grief.

I often get invisible visitors in my kingdom. They request an audience with me, then talk to me, all the while being under an invisibility spell. I find that rather rude, but well... it must be some Stolen Lands custom considering even Octavia and Tristian do it.

It's a testament to the game that I've played it for over 150 hours now even though the loading screens are terrible and plenty (and I thought Pillars was bad) and you can expect anything, really anything to break any time you click on something. Now if only someone would sit down and explain irregular verbs to the writing team. How did they not catch a single one during all the proofreading? I breaked inside a little every time, really.

My favorite In Flames album is Clayman. It came out after they toured with Moonspell and has some obvious influences from that tour as well, e.g. Clayman being the first In Flames album to feature synths if I remember correctly. It also helps that I really enjoy Moonspell, particularily Irreligious. I'd consider both - Clayman and Irreligious - quintessential items in any metal fan's collection, regardless of genre preference, and I don't even like most Black or Death Metal music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDwqzGtjGMU

Maybe an analogy will help. Imagine you're attending a hard rock festival with a surprise main act at the end of the show. You're paying up to 199$ to go see your favorite acts, including a few oldies and a bunch of cover bands. So far it's been kind of entertaining but nothing special. But the secret main act is still coming. There've been a few hints and teases and you kind of know what it is going to be about already. Then it finally happens, the main act comes onto the stage and is... Taylor Swift. Or in other words, if maybe if AC/DC showed up instead of Led Zepelin it would be reasonable to blame your expectations, but nobody goes to a hard rock festival to see Taylor Swift revealed as the surprise main act.

Here, found the real reason for the audience reaction at Blizzcon. Why... toxic masculinity of course. https://twitter.com/WillJPowers/status/1058446033724694528

Ah, the early 00s were "fun" times for metal fans. In Flames' Reroute to Remain, Metallica's St. Anger and Theatre of Tragedy's [ˈmjuːzɪk] marked the end of the era where I could go out and grab a new album of a band I liked without reading reviews or listening to samples. There are other examples of course but those weren't as extreme or at least not as jarring.

Casting AoE spells during an encounter is really difficult which is why I've loaded my higher tier spell book with various versions of Chain Lightning. It's also a nice throwback to the good old IE games in terms of descriptions not matching what's going on. Oh so many spells saying they affect only enemies in their area of effect but, uhm, woops, sorry, did you need your party for something else than roleplaying a carpet? I keep a few AoE damage spells on my main to use on groups that I can safely attack before an encounter starts. Coupled with being able to sneak attack due to Surprise Spells large groups of enemies evaporate into a bloody mist before they can lift a finger. Although... this is barely any faster than hacking the group apart by letting your party auto-attack while being buffed with Haste. Another part of the issue is worthwhile enemies being virtually immune to spells anyway - and if they aren't then they're usually at least protected against Magic Missiles. My Arcane Trickster sometimes looks in envy to Jubilost. Oh look, a terrifying Ferocious Devourer. Scorching Ray! Resisted. Magic Missile! Immune to Magic Missiles. Oook. Uhm, Hellfire Ray! Resisted. Okay let's sneak attack with the dagger. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Meanwhile Jubilost is like "Bitch, please!", pulls out his Holy Bombs and goes like hit, 45 damage. Hit, 45 damage. Hit, 60 damage. Combat finished. And to add insult to the injury you can throw 20+ bombs. Sigh.

Wait, did you accidentially start The Sims?

Yeah those magister rank up is definitely bugged, that you can fix. The other two I've only seen happening after I gave myself an extra year for kindgom management by resetting the time. I learned the hard way to not do that so far back as to have another Bald Hilltop event that already happened fire again - major stat drain and you can't do anything about it. Anyway, if it's not related to save game editing at least you'll have a month or two of game time for the devs to fix that. This was the buggiest release I've ever played but at least they try hard to fix the issues.

Do you mean kingdom stat upgrade events? Because those can be bugged and the event card that says [Advisortype] is asking for an audience will stick around forever. The easiest way to fix that is to manually edit your save and increase the kingdom stat, bypassing the project that never fired and... sort of live with the card that won't go away.

Hilarious, isn't it? Two of three councillors are gated behind easily missed or ignored decisions, one made at the very beginning of the game and the other one when you have to do something completely out of character for most players. So, basically, if you have no alternatives and didn't allow the other possible councillor to remain in your lands (if you did you can still pick her up ) you need to wait to get that NPC back.

GOG allows you to archive the installers - that's as good as having them on discs. Whether or not they'll run on future platforms is something entirely else of course. If you want to build a decent gaming PC don't forget three components that are all too often ignored, to the detriment of the player. Pick a good keyboard, a mouse you can use without your hands falling off and a good, comfortable chair. It's one of these hilarious arguments from console peasants that they can sit on a comfortable couch while playing. Well, duh, people pay a couple grand for a good couch to sit on and then put a $50 IKEA chair in front of their computer and wonder why it's less comfortable. Same goes for Sonic's incessant "gamepads and touch controls are more comfortable than keyboards!" trolling posts here.

Pastafarians are allowed to wear a strainer on their ID photos. Sure the police stated the decisiion to allow the sieve wasn't based on religious grounds but picture IDs only allow headgear for religious reasons, so go figure. They just didn't want this to be brought to court. The Pastafarians in Austria have been trying to become a registered religious community for a while now and are denied even though they fulfill all the criteria.

The court confirmed an Austrian ruling, that was "just" an appeal. While I would agree that these laws shouldn't exist in the first place if they do they need to apply to all religions equally, that's one of these pesky EU anti-discrimination rules you agree to when joining. Most of them were made with some form of Christianity in mind. Malcador dug up a similar ruling about an Anti-Christian film. There have been attempts to change or deprecate the law in question by both libertarian and left wing parties, but guess what, the christian center-right would rather keep their protection from blasphemy and risk it covering teh mooslims. *shrug*

I like it how I can set my companions to handle problems but then spend the entire 14 days they need to do so traversing the mountains looking for spider caves, barbarian hordes and dungeons full of undead with them in the party. Apparently everyone else has acess to long distance communication and travel except the king. Eh, and maybe Nok-Nok since he's not allowed to handle anything. Edit: Just had a problem pop up that requires the attention of one of my advisors for 45 days. GG Owlcat, consider me trolled.

Oh dear. That moment when satire becomes reality:

I backed the new season on Kickstarter for a good deal of money and am now not legally allowed to watch it. And the corprorate fatcats wonder why piracy runs rampant.

Condolences from me too Malc. On Monday my boss handed me a todo before disappearing for the week. With our supporter also gone all I managed to do was taking a look at it. So, gotta rush it tomorrow, yay. At least our support guy will be back and I don't have to spend the entire day hearing whiny complaints on the phone about how whatever they were trying to do always worked and it suddenly stopped working even though nobody touched that module in the past two years.

That might actually end up being a purchase for me. I still have the original box here somewhere.

To quote the Borg queen: You imply disparity where none exists.

We also have a normal overtime regulations like everyone else, with a 50% markup for regular weekday overtime and a 100% markup for Sunday/holiday work and even higher ones for people working (graveyard) shifts, dangerous or dirty work. Most pople have regular work contracts and get paid overtime. I just don't, and funny as that may sound, by choice. That I can sit here at 09:10 in the morning and type up this post before I leave for work is a big part of it.