Enoch

The official did him a favor. Forte would've been tackled short of the goal line had he caught the ball, and the half would've expired. The incompletion stopped the clock and allowed a FG attempt.

This is actually the most approachable track on this album-- the only one with the musicians mostly playing on their typical instruments. From the wikipedia description: It's pretty great.

Out of curiousity, does anybody know what, in particular, MCA contributed to this game? Rose's Garden Journal is the only bit of writing I've seen thus far that has really given off an Avellone-ish vibe.

A can of seltzer, and a rye Old Fashioned. (Separately, of course.) Lately, I favor the "chunky" version of the OF. Some use sugar syrup, a whole cherry, bitters, and a bit of orange peel to make a clear drink. Which is nice and pretty. But the chunky alternate allows you to pick the booze- and bitters-soaked fruit mush out of the bottom after you finish the drink Not especially dignified, but it's tasty and satisfying. How to: Toss a half-slice of orange into the glass. (At the risk of pointing out the obvious, use an Old Fashioned glass. All the best drinks have glassware named for them.) Then, a demerara sugar cube and 5 or so dashed of angostura bitters. Muddle a bit. Then add a ****tail cherry (preferrably homemade) and muddle until it's mush. Add a handful of ice cubes and stir to coat the ice. Add 3 oz. whiskey, preferrably rye, but an assertive bourbon or Canadian whisky will do. Stir a little more, and add another ice cube if the glass can take it. Drink slowly.

Hrmm. I just got an email that my Origin account password has been changed, which was news to me. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to do anything about it until I get home tonight. Not what I was hoping to do with my evening. They don't have my credit card information, and, if I recall correctly, the only game I have on there is Mass Effect 3. What's the worst a hacker could do with that in 12 hours?

I'll have to check that one out, Beckham was supposed to be a really hot prospect. AFAIK he was the only one the Saints really "courted" pre-draft, but it was a long shot he would fall even to the trade up territory where they got a similar-ish guy in Cooks... The CB was flagged for holding Beckham earlier in the route. He had 3 other catches, drew one sizeable pass-interference penalty, and got wide open on a deep ball that Manning threw out-of-bounds. (Eli later said that he was trying to throw the ball away, and that he didn't see Beckham coming open until he was about to release the ball. They haven't had a whole lot of practice time together.)

Stupid Rams and Texans. Teasing me by coming close to handing Dallas and Philly the losses they so richly deserve, but wilting in the closing moments. Ah well, at least the Giants took care of business. And, hey, that guy they drafted 12th overall (WR Odell Beckham Jr.) can play! After missing, well, everything so far in his NFL career with a bad hamstring, I was afraid that the lack of practice time would make his rookie year a wash.

How does one find shrines, anyway? Is it just a tedious "comb the desert" thing, or should I be expecting to get hints from NPCs like I did from that first raider at the Radio Tower? I've started over to see what Ag-Center-first is like. (So far: More fun than Highpool, although more ammo-scarce.) I went with a brawler for melee this time, which has a whole lot of undocumented features that might just make it the superior melee choice. (I haven't seen enough of the later-game weapons to be sure.) There are inputs on damage from character level, skill level, and Strength that you don't see with any other weapon class. The key feature is that by the time you get 10 ranks in Brawling, your Crit Chance is 100% (even with a 1 in Luck). Having been spoiled as to what Rose provides (i.e., 10-INT with a strong starting investment in 2 must-have skills), I figured that I can go with 3 4-INT Rangers and only 1 skillmonkey. I put together the following group: 8 STR, 8 SPD, 4 INT: Brawling, Safecracking, and a little bit of Toast. High-CI rifle-lady, 4 STR, 4 INT: ARs, Perception, 1-point dips in the Medical skills. Will probably develop Weaponsmith here. Leader character: 7 CHA, 4 INT. Leadership, Lockpicking, SMGs for now, but will go Energy Weapons later. 10-INT guy: Kiss, Smart, Demolitions, Sniper Rifles. Rose for CS and Surgeon, will add Field Medic later. Not sure on which direction to go with her weaponry. Probably go with Chisel as my next NPC, as a pack mule who can take over Hard Ass and Brute Force duties from Angela. 3rd NPC TBD. Somebody will pick up Outdoorsman duties and a few ranks in Mech Repair as we go along. Rose and my skillmonkey should have the points for it.

Official. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68878-pillars-of-eternity-early-2015-beta-feedback-and-game-polish/

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68878-pillars-of-eternity-early-2015-beta-feedback-and-game-polish/

Sometimes I really do envy folks like this. That feeling of smug superiority for being one of the select few who can see what is so obviously wrong with the rest of the world is really great. Ah, to be 15 again. It doesn't feel fair that some people appear able to prolong that feeling well into middle-age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mXcs16jMsY I had NPR on the radio driving to work this morning. After dropping the wife off near her building, the youngin started to get restless and whiny. I switched from Steve Innskeep talking about ebola to this, which made the little guy much happier. (Me, too.)

It's worst when a high-CI melee opponent initiates combat before you can get into a proper formation. The enemy is in your face, all your characters, NPCs, and animals are clustered together, and you can't walk through a tile occupied by another character. Alternately, the enemy is far off and you're got your folks in alert mode waiting for them to get close, and that damned rat charges straight at them. If it's a gate/door, you can also brute force it if you broke the lock. And, if all else fails, there's always good ol' TNT.

I think you can use Alarm Disarm in place of CompSci on some locks. As far as I can tell, mechanical repair is useful mostly in that it can fix locked items that you've jammed with a critical failure. I've used Surgeon for things other than party-healing in both Highpool and Rail Nomads. After running with Vulture's Cry a bit, I've determined that I really prefer not to have any Animal Whisperer at all. Those little beasts get in the way in combat far too much, particularly if you recruit one that thinks it's a melee fighter. The annoyance factor outweighs the buffs they bring.

Is it really that much of a spoiler to say that the early-game settlement you don't rescue has a bad time? I helped Highpool, but I haven't cleared out the place where those raiders came from yet. (Hopefully there isn't some kind of time limit on that!) Instead, I checked out the Ag Center ruins and went to the Rail Nomads' location. Which is rather huge. It's a bit irritating that the game gives you a joinable NPC option at Rail Nomads whose non-combat skills are Lockpick and Safecracking. I'd be surprised if anybody got this far into the game naturally without already building those skills in one of their characters. Apparently, the Certified Powergamer strategy of choice is to run to Rail Nomads before you complete the Radio Tower, just to get this guy. Combine that with Rose for medical and computers, and you can afford to build your own characters with a greater combat focus.

I think mine was the F:NV collector's edition.

I wouldn't exactly call the Dallas OL acquisitions "quiet." They spent 3 first-round draft choices on OL in only 4 years-- they damn well better be putting together one of the better lines in the League. The surprising thing about the Cowboys is that they've somehow managed to get better-than-historically-awful production out of their defense. (Well, and that Murray hasn't snapped in half yet.) Everybody knew that their offensive talent was very strong (if healthy); the storyline coming into the season was that they somehow had even less talent on defense than 2013's worst-in-the-League unit did. Anyhow, this shocking competence from Jerrah's boys was the only blemish on an otherwise pleasant football week. Really? I mean, the Saints' (lack of) performance is surprising, but I don't know who was expecting much out of the rest of the division. TB is clearly in rebuild mode, with a new coach, seat-warmer QB, etc. The Falcons were awful last year, and while the offense was expected to rebound with healthier WRs, they still had plenty of clear holes on defense. (Fun Fact in advance of next week's ATL@NYG: The last time the Falcons won a game played outdoors was Nov. 25, 2012.) And Carolina had known problems on the OL and defensive back-end. One of those teams is going to make the playoffs, but the early guess is that they aren't going to be hanging around for long.

Here in DC, the starting point for a 1BR is probably double that. Today I found out that I'm going to be getting an award at work. The team within my agency to which I spend most of my time providing legal advice is recognizing my customer service.

Well, that was fun. And, as a Giants fan working in an office in DC, today should be almost as fun. I was having a tough time understanding why people were getting so hyped about Washington. Sure, the offense looked good against Jacksonville and Philadelphia, but it doesn't take much to look good against that caliber of defense. (Specifically, neither team has much of anything that can fairly be called a pass rush.) With the injuries they've piled up and with a rookie head coach having to deal with a very short week of preparation, some drop-off should really have been expected. And, this should kill the "Cousins over Griffin!" nonsense for the time being. Also: Hey, the Giants have a Tight End who can play! Larry Donnell can be the new beacon of hope to unheralded guys at the periphery of an NFL roster-- undrafted and unsigned in 2011, invited to Camp in 2012, on the practice squad for the 2012 season, the 3rd-string TE in 2013, and now piling up touchdowns as a starter.

In my experience, CPRGs with any degree of player freedom almost inevitably end up with a broken in-game economy by the time you're more than a third of the way through them. So a Barter skill is a classic early-game crutch that ends up helping not a bit after you've done enough sidequests to be ahead of the loot curve on the main plotline. Maybe W2 is an exception to this? It'd be nice, but I'm not holding my breath.

Out-of-nowhere thought: inXile really missed an opportunity by not naming their Barter skill "Cheap Ass." (Edit: Also, by not eliminating the Barter skill entirely. Seriously-- does anybody ever feel any temptation to invest points in an "it gets you better prices" skill?)

Is the INT threshold for Surgeon still in the game? I see it on the wiki, but a lot of the stuff there is legacy info from the beta. And, as far as I can recall, the in-game tool-tip didn't mention it at all. If it's still there, it is seriously weird that only 1 skill has a clear Attribute requirement. (And that it's tied to an Attribute that is already overpowered.) You can totally master Computer Science with a 1 in INT (or X Ass with 1 CHA, or Perception with 1 Awareness, or Knife-fighting with 1 Coordination, etc.), but Surgeons need to be brainiacs (and it's not a problem if they're incredibly clumsy)! I'm guessing that choosing Highpool will rule out the medical jNPC. Hopefully that lady in the cage will turn out to be decent.

Question: How do the medical skills scale? I notice that relieving certain conditions depends on meeting threshold requirements in your Surgeon skill. Does this continue all the way up to 10? (I.e., are there any conditions that you need a super-high Surgeon skill to fix?) Do additional ranks of Field Medic have any effect other than the HP yield of healing items? What I'm mostly trying to figure out is whether one or both would be a good candidate for developing to middle-levels and then abandoning in favor of other skills.

The problem with the equipment threshold is that it's a gotcha. The game tells you straight out what the consequences are for most of attribute decisions, but it leaves the equipment threshold information out. All the description of STR says is a vague statement about it letting you "use heavy weapons." That'd be one thing if there were a variety of STR-indexed items or if there were a mechanic like in F:NV where you could use an item above your STR at decreased effectiveness. But here we have 1 threshold that matters above all others, no wiggle room, and no warning to the player. Somebody making a front-line shotgunner (or whatever) might decide based on the information presented that 4 STR is enough for his HP purposes, not knowing that 1 more point would make a dramatic difference in his character's effectiveness.

Yeah, I'm tooling around with it a bit now, and STR does seem oddly weak for combat purposes. Why does it only boost damage when you get a critical, and why by so little? A world-class strongman is only 9% more damaging on a really good punch than is the prototypical 98 lb. weakling? Its primary effect seems to be on HP. (And, apparently, as an equipment threshold.) But damage prevention-- by getting them before they get you-- is almost always superior to damage soaking in this kind of game. So I see where the CI-advocates are coming from. Much like the more-effective Fallout characters, the END-equivalent is looking like a persistent dump stat.