majestic

I know a cook who makes his steaks like that (the same one that keeps giving everyone ketchup as a condiment to his steaks). He has been doing that for a while and has ever since larger steaks on offer. Prior to that he usually only had tenderloin or similar that was cut a lot less thick than regular steaks and got a really quick high heat sear on both sides, then straight to letting it rest and serving. It is not what one would expect when ordering a steak in the traditional sense, but it keeps the meat juicy and infuses it with a good deal of flavor, although one really needs to like their beef bleu. Downsides are of course the cuts are terribly expensive, and... it is tenderloin, at the end of the day, and not everyone likes them bleu (I do, so sue me ). A decent tomahawk/rib eye will come with a more beefy flavor and a vastly different dining experience, although admittedly I am not one to dismiss decent fillets as a matter of course like plenty of other purists. Right, where was I going with this, yeah, works fine, and produces good steaks quickly, which is the biggest downside of the traditional method of high heat searing and putting it in the oven (time constraints easily being the biggest hurdle for small restaurants). Not sure how well that works for salmon or pork chops, but it really does make for a great rib eye steak.

As one of only one person on the planet who preferred the original to Brotherhood, I, uhm... recommend the original.

TL;DW: Intel really needs to let a competent company design cards. Better design and better drivers, and it would actually be one hell of a debut. Could argue that it was one, regardless of the state of the drivers. Edit: For the love of sweet Baby Jesus, can we also please stop making components glow in all sorts of colors? Intel wasted time, effort and money on custom single layer RGB PCBs to make their cards glow blue. Seriously. What the hell?

No, he did not mean that as a joke or as a reference to Eldar. ComradeMage, sorry, SonicYellow, nope, wrong again, sorry, ComradeYellow and his predecessor SonicMage117 are is a manufactured personalities personality with a sometimes mildly amusing but usually fairly pointless and boring trolling shtick. Similar in style to a previous poster, but with a different focus, who dissapeared roughly around the same time ComradeYellow appeared (with perhaps an intermediate step in between). Struck out parts are there because we're not really supposed to talk about who could be whose successor account. Edit: It behooves me to explain further, ComradeYellow is 'convinced of' (read: trolling about) China's and Russia's superiority over the West. This is all that Bruce is basing this idea on.

See, and you probably don't even understand the German lyrics, which is a mercy beyond imagining.

Nope. Sorry for cross posting this, but people probably missed it in the music thread. xD

Ember quest spoilers: Does that even work that way? It does for mortal souls, but what about demons? Do they get destroyed instead?

Does Hellfire Ray really send to Hell? Because that would be doubly cruel to any demon she kills with it.

The suicide option you have to pick right before deciding on what you want to do. If you have a save, that's over really quickly. No need to play. I did the hidden ending once and picked the Temperance ending at that point because it was what was still open. What a glorious waste of time that was.

Alone or with Rogue?

This... whatever it was, it made Mio cry.

Yeah, Perception 2 is pretty much a fixture in any Trickster run. Persuasion 3 is useful for builds that stack any possible bonus for intimidation. That is a fun build, but it also highlights how ludicrous the game design is. Basically one ends up taking a single level of Cross-Blooded Sorcerer for the Serpentine and Undead bloodlines, and adds a level of Witch for a Raven familiar, stacks STR and CHA enhancements with Indimidating Prowess, and so on and so forth. Either way, making use of most of the Trickster stuff requires in-depth knowledge of the game and available items, but if applied correctly it really is game-breaking. Yes. For all the debate going on in here about how to best utilize Arue, on a full Unfair run, unless you want the experience to be even more frustrating than it already is, most of your group will consist of optimized mercenaries, and it does not matter at all how you use Arue, because she just stays at home. The real difficulty of Unfair runs is less in the bosses and really more in the masses of enemies that spawn and swarm your party, and that they deal so much damage that even a random hit from an enemy archer can one-shot your backline. One of the hardest points of an Unfair run is Sosiel's graveyard quest (even doing it later). The zombies spawn on top of your party and proceed to kill characters in one hit, and you maybe cannot even react to them. Stat priorities shift from regular games at Normal or even Core. @Gromnir already mentioned improving one's initiative roll as a good way to make the game more controllable. Optimizing initiative is not a nice to have on Unfair, it is a necessity. Stacking spell damage through items and bloodlines is not optional. The quicker you can clear screens of enemies, the less chance they have to randomly chunk Ember into tiny little Ember bits. Last Stand is a staple of Unfair builds, as is the aforementioned Diehard feat on animal companions. Spells not affected by enemy Spell Resistance are king. Animal companions that are there to protect their riders also often just take Improved Unarmed Combat to get to Crane Style. Iron Will and Improved Iron will help with preventing involuntary dismounting, which prett much is a death sentence. Oh hello there, little swarm. Gibber. Reload. It is, and I'm never going to play a full game on Unfair again. Ugh. On a general note for the thread, has anyone tried playing a Sensei? Senseis get the Bard's Song ability and can make their Ki Powers apply to all party members at level six. How about a mercenary that can give out True Strike (until the Ki Pool is depleted). You can cast other fun stuff like Barkskin and Restoration too. Best thing about is that you can stop with the monk levels once you're happy with your Ki powers and Inspire Courage bonus and add something else. There's no spellcasting to brick without added levels, so slapping Slayer levels on the character for some sneak damage and Study would not be the worst. Some Fighter levels for Fighter's Tactics perhaps, then use a BFT to make it go brrrrrrr. Has someone tried the Elemental Barrage Geniekind cheese with the EE yet? Was that really fixed?

I have nothing to contribute to the thread's topic, but **** is not on the word filter, in one of these barely explicable happenstances. Much like ass and arse are not, but **** is and arsehole is not. Neither is butthole, nor asshat, nor bunghole. edit: Way to go to prove me wrong, apparently **** was added at some point. How am I going to call Twitter Twatter now? edit 2: So Twatter is not on the filter because it apparently can distinguish between words, but C0ckatrice, C0ckpit and C0ocktail are? Well, as Volo would say: R00fles. What twattiness.

The easiest way that is pretty much always doable (at least pre-EE, no idea about any changes) is to turn off XP sharing until you have a full party, reach level three in the Shield Maze*, give Lann a Divine Hunter level and pick the Leopard companion. Buff it with Camellia, send it to facetank the Water Elemental and win. edit 2: To explain, with reaching level three on Lann, you can give him the Leopard and Boon Companion, pushing the Leopard to level three. That means it can have Doge and Diehard, making it possible to withstand more punishment from the Large Water Elemental. You can (well, should, I suppose) cast Enlarge Person on your party to make everything have reach and hit more easily and harder. Charge in, pull them out, charge back in, as charge gives a nice chunk of extra AB. Use Glaives and the Masterwork Greatsword for the 1.5 extra damage multiplier to get through the DR 5. Other ways are kiting, because it is damned slow, or having a CHA to AC double dip MC - that way you can potentially push your armor class with buffs to a point where it's possible to withstand the attacks provided you can stomach reloading a couple of times. It has 'only' 17 attack bonus, but 37 AC is really hard to reach (more like impossible), so you need as many debuffs on it as you can make stick. Also, of course, do the entire Shield Maze before taking on the Elemental for all the scrolls and potions. *One of the things that is very noticable on Unfair is how many more enemies there are in the game. Combined with hogging all the experience for yourself (it is pointless not to until you can get out of the prologue and add party members or mercenaries), it provides a much needed level boost. That is even more of a reason why simply increasing the difficulty to Unfair for boss fights is not indicative of how a full Unfair run plays. That circular room in Blackwater that @Gorth had problems with - IIRC on Unfair that had three times the amount of demons. With much, much better stats. edit: Ah, ninja'ed.

Oh, that's one thing I forgot to mention, the Freedom Party's members of parliament used to come to the opening of parilament wearing cornflowers (it is tradition to wear flowers in one of your open button holes on opening day). The explanation given - in public - is that they picked cornflowers becaus they are blue (the party color) and that the flowers are pretty. Well, no doubt about either of those. They ARE blue. They ARE pretty. They were also used by the Austrian NSDAP branch as secret code to recognize each other during our own ill-fated fascist government (with the dictator coming from my dear friends, the conservative party - whose images still adorn the party headquarter, because far be it from only Nazi follow ups not learning anything from the past) where the NSDAP was outlawed. Yeah, every time someone cried Nazi, and they basically would go: Nazi successor party founded by prominent SS members wear secret code flowers that helped Nazis recognize each other in the past. Just a coincidence. Nothing to see here, don't play the Nazi card.

Well, not that it will convince you, but the Freedom Party's first chairman was former Nazi Minister of Agriculture and SS Brigardeführer Anton Reinthaller. In more recent times, long term leader Jörg Haider publicly praised Third Reich policies (particularily labour policies, with a wink at useless asylum seekers and migrants not pulling their weight), successor Heinz Strache regulariy participated in Neo-Nazi protests and Wehrsportübungen (use google translate, serviceable enough) and still retains contacts, and their current party leader is responsible for some of the party's best slogans, including but not limited to: Heimatliebe statt Marokkanerdiebe (Patriotism instead of Moroccan thieves!). Wien darf nicht Chicago werden (Vienna must not become Chicago, which back then caused the mayor of Chicago call and ask what's so bad about his city) Daham statt Islam (Home instead of Islam) Sometimes they pick up a caricature or two and change it: Original: Changed: Changes, focused: I'm not sure you'll get it, so let me spell it out for you: That's a whole bunch of anti-semitic imagery that could as easily have been taken from the Stürmer. Sometimes their members have songbooks full of great songs at home. Well, you know, @Amentep has it right. If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. Nazis gonna Nazi.

Oh, look, I managed to make a new line in @KP From Another World's signature, and this time it wasn't bait...

@Gorth @InsaneCommander @Zoraptor Cammy spoilers, peek at your own risk:

The best ending is where Not sure what was so bad about the Arasaka ending, other than it being even more tragic than the others. Sort of.

Doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Also true for the prisoner you'll stumble upon later.

Whee, that reminds me, we'll also have a presidential election next Sunday. That'll be amusing, but only mildly. I'm going to cast my lot in with the guy from the Beer Party, because there are no real alternatives (well, there's a Nazi with a decidedly strange name for one*, a gay Nazi, a lawyer Nazi and some other joke candidates to pick from too). If it comes to a second round, which seems rather unlikely at the moment, I'll go with the sitting president, so he can serve his second time, or potentially more likely, cost us a funeral with full honors (currently 78, heavy smoker and the term is six years). Oh, right, the reason, well... our current Mr. President disqualified himself after saying that it might be time to observe what's happening on the energy markets. Observe, mind you. Not do anything about it. In late September. No, you dillweed, the time to observe was last year, and to act - well, it was high noon in February. *Mr. Rosenkranz, dunno, is that just me showing some everyday racism or is it weird that someone with a name like Rosenkranz is part of a party that grew out of NSDAP leftovers?

It's made fresh for the lunch buffet, so even if nobody ate any of it, it's no older than three hours, but I've been to the place every now and then, and they're always hard at work making more, so it's less. Certainly fresher than anything you get from a supermarket. Health regulations and inspections being what they are, Asian joints can't really afford to poison their customers at the moment. Particularily not after that little hooplah a while back where a whole bunch of illegal gyoza/jiaozi/mandu factories were raided by the police. I don't think we ever really qualified as dirt poor, but we were a single income, blue collar family of four for a long time. Some things keep sticking around.

Our local Asian restaurant joined the Too Good To Go service. Me, being the miser that I am, immediately tried it out: So, that's a whole lot of maki (regular and California with avocado, salmon and tuna), fried shrimp and calmari, Korean sticky chicken with noodles, fried chicken wings with rice, a box of potato wedges, some salad and a whole bunch of fried fruit with honey for 9.98€. The only downside is that the pickup time is from 14:50 to 15:00 each day (their lunch break, they close until 17:00), so this will only be viable for working from home days. Well, and you really need to be completely free of that useless feeling of, ah, dignity to go and grab leftovers, because while the app is trying to sell people on saving otherwise wasted food, let's face the facts here, this is takeout for people who are happy with whatever they get for really cheap. edit: With the perspective offering no real insight regarding the size of the boxes, that's two full layers of maki in the box, not just the visible one on top.

Obligatory Jim Beam video linking:

It is pretty boring to do, so it is best to install a mod for it. If you're going to use the cheese, might as well make it easy to use. I mean, sure, you could also spend ten minutes pressing Ember's cackle button and listen to her going HEE HEE HEE all the time, but that's not exactly fun, is it?