Gromnir

am not ordinarily a fan o' evhul companions, and a few o' the wotr options is perfect examples o' why we avoid the villainous party mates, but regill were probable our favorite wotr party npc, which admitted is not a particular high bar to reach. add enough qualifiers and anything becomes true, eh? we wouldn't enjoy regill's company in rl, but his behavior and motivations were believable and rational even if you thought the hellknight were unreasonable attached to his code. regill is no less a cartoon character than any o' the other wotr joinables. that's all. am not making excuses for liking regill more than the other wotr companions. HA! Good Fun!

wouldn't ever say russian dressing and thousand island are tasting similar, but they do have a similar appearance. thousand island has pickle relish, ketchup and no horseradish, chili or garlic. sure, both dressings is mayo-based and has paprika and lemon juice, but read ingredient list and imagine they taste sameish is challenging our creativity. the clear versions o' russian is using oil instead o' mayo. kinda vile in our estimation, but recognizing the mayo in most bottled varieties is at best inoffensive, am suspecting clear v. opaque makes little difference. that said, if you like a sauerkraut and corned beef sandwhich with honey mustard instead o' russian, am not gonna criticize. you got a sandwhich you enjoy? call it a win and it don't matter what is the name o' the meal... save to note you ain't eating a rueben if is on sourdough with thousand island dressing and pastrami. could be delicious, but why call it a rueben? 'course we got same issues with folks purposeful mistaking italian gravy or red sauce for bolognese. is some weird cachet which attaches to bolognese which makes folks mislabel? HA! Good Fun!

won't happen for the bank either. a single bad loan by a mega bank does not result in auto government forgiveness. however, you are correct that big banks and auto makers and any number o' too big to fail enterprises exist. sorry, but that is the stark reality o' the situation and is indeed not fair. if OMNI bank and a similar half dozen banks were to go t!ts up, near all americans would suffer. hurl goes under and is only hurl and his family which suffers. regardless, the single loan scenario is not doing you or hurl favours. HA! Good Fun!

but it ain't massively profitable for the bank if we accept your description. assume you got one million dollars to invest. chances are you can do better than 4% return. so what is the motivation for a bank to lend to hurl and other homeowners if they may invest that money elsewhere for better return? bruce may be a less than ideal representative o' the western capitalist pov, but am thinking some folks ain't being complete fair. US banks is in the business o' making money. *shock* sure, more than a few lenders indulge in predatory schemes and banks such as wells fargo were active indulging the worst used car salesman approach to many o' their accounts. here in the US we had more bank regulation, right up until bill clinton. george bush (43) tried to claw back some o' the regulatory oversight power o' the fed which clinton surrendered and his own party turned on him... which no doubt would feed into @Guard Dogand his they are all bad narrative. regardless, for all the terrible stuff banks do, your example is so not a great illustration o' such evils. for the most part banks ain't hiding their lending scheme for home owners and is not as if they is forcing other credit products on you when you take out a mortgage. thanks in part to minimal bank regulations (damned socialists) you may get a home loan on your personal residence at a noticeable better rate than you would for investment property or business, so in and of itself, the banks ain't making massive profits on the loans... which is exact what is the reason banks did all kinda stoopid in the early and mid 2000s to turn minimal profitable loans into larger profits... same kinda stoopid banks is doing yet again in 2022 btw. if hurl can do better with a $1 million dollar investment, why should the bank be prevented from doing so? am agreeing there is many systemic obstacles to home ownership which ain't fair, obstacles which is predictable resulting in increasing income disparity and decreases in home ownership for each new generation. it isn't fair. however, what hurl describes ain't the problem. HA! Good Fun!

am probable gonna holdout until the enhanced edition release as am suspecting there will be many changes capable o' impacting our decision on what we might wanna try with a complete new run. HA! Good Fun!

new dlc today, but more significant for those playing wotr for the first time, https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1184370?emclan=103582791469275223&emgid=3225161106688762145 is substantial changes, but have not read in entirety. we did notice one curiosity: "All animal companions with horns and tusks finally recalled they shouldn't bite, and started using their horns at full capacity. All animal companions with gore now perform a free trip attack with gore;" so, boar, elk, mastodon and triceratops now get free trip? hmmm. "Weapon Finesse (Mythic) will work with the finesse weapons only from now on." doesn't affect Gromnir, but am suspecting howls o' anguish from a few people. HA! Good Fun! ps "Feyspeaker druid finally got some new DLC spells in their repertoire" which is likely interesting to nobody but Gromnir, but am gonna need see what were changed. charisma casting druid were all borked and the shadow spell dcs were busted since beta, though potential more effective previous to one o' the post release patches. have wanted to play a gnome feyspeaker druid since release, but...

well, that would be new. admitted we haven't played wotr for a couple months, but we often have sosiel with one level o' crossblood sorc and the water + dragon bloodlines to convert elemental spells to ice and then benefit from increased ice damage. there is armour in the game which boosts elemental damage and a shield which boosts cold damage, so while it sounds odd, having sosiel casting cold-based stormbolts is kinda a thing. we took ascendent element: cold and it always worked. scrolls shouldn't prevent ascendent element from working. a witch learning from scrolls sounds like a bug. HA! Good Fun!

no doubt you already checked, but the trigger for the azata mythic is extreme ez to miss. would kinda suck to finish drezen, after a couple dozen (or more) hours o' wotr gameplay, only to realize you failed to "hook up the doll." HA! Good Fun!

sausage gravy is easy, and am thinking homemade biscuits are also easier than most people realize. we ordinarily use heavy cream for the biscuits, which means we don't need to cut butter into flour careful and slow add buttermilk or some other labor intensive exercise. as such we almost invariably use cream for the gravy. prep for the biscuits requires five ingredients and a bowl. takes five minutes, tops? another fifteen minutes bake time... maybe add one extra ingredient as am likely to brush the biscuits with melted butter to help give the biscuits a nice golden brown color. our most common hurdle for the rueben is not the bread but is the russian dressing, which we ordinarily find abhorrent when purchasing store brands. at the moment, 'cause o' the chili pepper shortages, is difficult to find huy fong chili garlic sauce, so making our own russian is improbable. our dressing requires mayo, the aforementioned chili garlic sauce, paprika, a bit o' lemon and worcestershire, horseradish, minced garlic and salt and pepper to taste. curious, we typical have sauerkraut on hand, at least from fall months through spring. find good deli corned beef is not always ez but we manage 'cause am gonna admit we maybe once per year corn our own beef. but again, sriracha, chili garlic sauce and anything which includes the necessary chili peppers is gonna be hit and miss on availability. even when such is available we rare think is worth making russian dressing to have a rueben. is not difficult to find perfect good alternatives to the rueben when am in possession o' quality corned beef. nevertheless, is an admirable and relative unique sandwich, so we make 'em when the spirit moves us. HA! Good Fun!

fyi, is perhaps not important, but you mentioned lost chapel and share an image with foot-o-the-cliff at lost chapel, but we didn't see mention o' a noteworthy denizen o' lost chapel. is not as if you need mention all aspects o' lost chapel, but absence were noteworthy. spoiler: HA! Good Fun!

@Gorth we forgot to mention leading strike as a recommended mythic powha for seelah and/or whomever is your tank... which appears to be camellia. seelah, thru mythic 9, usual has the same powhaz for us regardless if we build her paladin or paladin/court poet or paladin with a single level o' sorc or... no particular order: leading strike, ever ready, mythic beast, thundering blows, inspirational leader, last stand, abundant casting, improved critical, weapon focus. if we go azata, then no last stand as life bonding friendship nullifies the benefit. if we go more court poet/paladin, then we take the second tier o' abundant casting as well. for lann, as an archer, am always taking cleaving shot and is almost certain we get expose vulnerability and distracting shot. HA! Good Fun! ps is possible azata is not in the cards for @Gorth. am hesitating to mention, but if you are interested on the azata triggers, we got info from a link. is stuff which already woulda' happened, so minimal spoilers.

two non-mythic feats we recommend for all melee party members: outflank and seize the moment (for seize, combat reflexes is a prerequisite). surprising, outflank benefits ranged characters, so might as well give to lann outflank as well. there is an amazing synergy 'tween a party with blanket seize the moment and ever ready. if your barbarian is adjacent to a companion (even animal companions... make certain to raise the int o' animal companions to 3 so they may acquire at least outflank and possible seize the moment) with seize the moment, you will benefit from an attack o' opportunity if the companion crits. at high levels you are gonna have a bunch o' attacks per round and your crit chance should be noteworthy. and so if you have three or four companions all attacking an enemy, and one o' you crits, then you all get a free attack, which might produce another crit... and so on. what ever ready does is it increases the number o' possible attacks o' opportunity as well as makes those attacks more likely to hit as well as increasing the damage output. ... 'course the problem with following Gromnir advice is your party might end up looking like a Gromnir party instead o' a @Gorthparty. is plenty o' ways to win in wotr. unfortunate there is so many ways to lose and you may not realize until you is level fifteen or so that your party is fubar. am offering advice to avoid calamity, but is worth just trying stuff which sounds kewl. have fun with the game, and try stuff which just kinda sounds interesting. ain't anybody on the wotr boards recommending turning sosiel into a dedicated intimidator or building a celestial velociraptor. if we had listened only to the experts, we would never have found stuff we think is quirky and fun. ignore Gromnir is equal good advice as is paying heed to Gromnir, and ignore might be more fun. HA! Good Fun! ps the benefits o' teamwork feats such as outflank and seize the moment is another reason to go with the azata mythic and chose life bonding friendship.

well then, do not underestimate the value of charge for seelah, and the capacity for your party to initiate almost any combat. might be a bit exploitive, but start combat rt and have all melee party members charge simultaneous to begin combat... and Then turn on tb when the charge is complete. is possible for all melee combatants to simultaneous charge a single foe in rt, wrecking most non-boss foes in the process. is worth considering up until you have the levels to keep seelah perpetual hastened, and possibly enlarged. aside, there remains a few tb combat hiccups. most such problems may be dismissed with a momentary switch to rt. if that do not work, you are able to create a save during combat by creating a bug report save: alt +b. complete exit the game after creating the bug report save and then reload will exorcise most tb bugs not fixed by a brief toggle to rt, but not all. and yes, the capacity to save during combat is potential exploitive. HA! Good Fun!

"limitless rage" is the obvious first choice for a barbarian, or any other class which relies on rage powhaz... and as kp so indelicate put it, brutality incarnate is linked to the use o' natural weapons such as claws and bite; even if you go the full beast totem route, (which is a good idea for an instinctual warrior/mutation warrior kinda barbarian) we typical wouldn't choose brutality incarnate at any point. on normal difficulty you ain't doomed by taking brutality incarnate, but if you do not respec, then make certain you choose all the beast totem rage powers in addition to animal fury. other mythic powahz we might unsolicited suggest for a great sword wielding barbarian at some point earlyisih is ever ready, myhtic charge, thundering blows, and if you don't go the azata route with life bonding friendship, then last stand is great for mitigating mistakes or if you are playing on higher difficulties. as is @Gorthfirst time playing, mistakes is gonna happen 'cause you do not possess a wealth o' meta-knowledge. seeing as you already took guarded stance and bit of fun, you might also inspect the archmage armour power, 'cause use o' those plentiful potions o' mage armour trigger the archmage armour mythic just as does casting the spell. archmage armour scales nice. early mythic feats which is kinda impossible to ignore for a greatsword haver is power attack (mythic) and improved critical (mythic.) seelah is extreme fast when mounted on a horse. the automatic choice for paladin is weapon bond, and is a perfect acceptable option, but it does mean seelah, particular in tb mode, will be the last invitee arriving at any combat party just so long as you got her in medium or heavy armour... which is likely. side note: fatigue, diseased and cursed is excellent choices for paladin mercies. feel free to ignore any and all Gromnir suggestions, but owlcat and pathfinder make it extreme ez to choose wrong even when something sounds right/good. HA! Good Fun!

regarding celestial velociraptor: don't overlook the UMD skill. of course animal companions should not be able to use scrolls, but with charisma boosting gear, your celestial raptor will be able to use any and all o' those personal-only spells which transform clerics and wizards into combat dynamos or make 'em functional invulnerable. HA! Good Fun! ps lead blades also applies to natural "hand" weapons, so your legendary proportion celestial velociraptor's claws and talon attacks is base 3d6 damage if you use the scroll. add a skald to the party with beast totem rage powers and the potential damage output for the raptor becomes kinda stoopid.

won't spoil story aspects too much, but is a short span during which you lose mythic and have not yet gained your legend powhaz... functional get dropped to mythic level 3. you will keep your first three mythic levels even as a legend. next you are tasked with a legendary quest which is more or less complex depending on choices you made throughout the game. you are gonna be relative underpowered at this point as you lost many mythic powhaz and you have gained no legend benefits. upon completion o' the legend quest you immediate gain enough xp to reach overall level 35. as such the stuff 'bout gaining xp at an accelerated rate is misleading-- true but misleading. you will reach level 40 with a fair amount o' gameplay to spare, but your increased rate o' level acquisition is not as dramatic as you might s'pose. illustration: when our companions final hit level 20, our legend had just reached overall level 38. so, in all honesty, after becoming legendary we gained three levels in the span our companions acquired two. the real kicker is the insta-boost from 18 to 35. as such, is good to have a relative complete leveling plan in mind as you are doing the legend quest. HA! Good Fun!

gonna admit we only created a second general much later in the game. until act v, we only had 1 general and that were adequate and likely better as we level'd up the single general a bit faster as 'posed to spreading the xp. setsuna shay (fire. lots of fire.) baroness gaunther/gunther (sp?) (maybe better for an angel character as she gets bonuses to divine spells) hate to say this but the wotr campaign stuff is not well balanced. the mage generals is objective better, though you ain't doomed if you go a different route. choose one o' the aforementioned generals and then maybe pick up the other in act 5 would be our recommendation. archery units are strongk. marksmen remain powerful but they used to be op. hellknights are solid early available army units choices as is clerics. HA! Good Fun!

our personal strategy is not grease dependent. that said, grease and glitterdust is arguable two o' the most effective spells in the game and both is low level. grease does help for tavern defense but is not essential. ember may spam slumber, so she is worthy o' consideration for tavern defense, but typical we got at least three party members with animal companions which allows us to be in more hot spots at once and am able to quick kill the bomb throwing meanines. do not hesitate to kill the enemy alchemists as failure to kill 'em all is what is gonna have your turn-based efforts stretch out interminable. we have lann kill enemy archers. animal companions, particular animal companions capable o' trip, make a big difference for the tavern defense. 'course if you do not have animal companions... reposting for no particular reason the smite ability for the divine hunter's animal companion is NOT once per day. spammable. for inexplicable reasons, the velociraptor has a charisma o' 14. smillodon has 10. the rest o' the critters get 'tween 4 and 7 for charisma. your velociraptor, once lann reaches divine hunter level 3 and the velociraptor may be designated celestial or fiendish, becomes an absolute murder machine with perpetual capacity to overcome dr plus added ab and damage versus evil foes... and most wotr foes is evil. is so many different ways to build characters and defeat difficult encounters. in spite o' insistence by many pundits that certain classes and companions is terrible, am gonna suggest such is mostly hogwash. the problem with pathfinder and wotr in particular is that in spite o' the many possible win options for building characters and companions, there is far too many bad options which initial look good on paper. is also counter-intuitive bad tactics for beating tough encounters. let the bad guys come to you for tavern defense? makes sense. bad tactics. HA! Good Fun! ps as we already mentioned grease and glitterdust, the main reason why both spells remain useful all game is 'cause they ignore spell resistance. use heighten metamagic to increase the effective spell level o' grease and glitterdust (thus increasing their dc) and both will remain staples from first hours o' the game until the end. (edit: selective spell metamagic, particular in the case o' grease, is also useful) is a couple curious examples o' enemy demons with wings which may nevertheless be knocked prone. go figure.

keep in mind when you switch to legend, you are granted an immediate +4 to all attributes. there is also an intelligence boosting tome you will be able to find a bit earlier as an angel, but nevertheless before endgame if you choose a different mythic. as a legend you are leveling up 20 more times-- plenty o' attribute points. you need 16 int to cast all vivisectionist spells and none o' your spell choices is gonna be dc dependent. if you hit level 16 vivisectionist at overall level 40, then assuming you started with a 10 int, you may drop your final attribute gain into int and you are golden, yes? with mythics, is no corner to be painted into insofar as demon or angel. however, the triggers for the tavern defense advancement are not always obvious. HA! Good Fun!

read at your own risk: HA! Good Fun! ps @Gorthone o' the most op builds involves barbarian (instinctual warrior)/fighter (mutation warrior) 16/4. go trickster for serious op. however, is complete unnecessary to indulge such silliness. am not a fan o' armoured hulk or beastkin berserker, but all the other archetypes has significant upside and is hardly as if armoured hulk and beastkin berserker is too weak to handle a hard run o' wotr. unsolicited observation: many barbarian builds finish with four levels o' fighter, but again, such is hardly required.

am hesitating to mention, but trickster is a viable option for a cn barbarian, though we likely wouldn't recommend for your first run. requires serious metagamey silliness to get the most o' trickster... both in terms o' mechanics and a few quests. trickster includes such cheese as a full wizard spell book so as long as your intelligence is 12, and you could possible have a critical range o' 11-20 and x5 damage on your main weapon(s)... not to mention being able to insta-paralyze all foes at the start o' combat. is serious over-the-top. legend has more than a few interesting aspects. a decent second class for a barbarian legend worth considering is sixteen levels ' o' vivisectionist... which provides you four levels to play 'round with and do whatever. get vivisectionist grand mutagen, infusions, sneak attack damage and numerous useful medical discoveries such as wings. is not too many bad ways to do legend but you do miss out on a few story aspects. also, while is more cheesy metagame nonsense, the best cloak in the game is available to the aeon mythic path, so start aeon and switch to legend (or devil) is a decent pragmatic choice, but maybe not so good for a cn barbarian. HA! Good Fun! ps azata is also an obvious choice for a not-evil barbarian. the incredible might sooper power as well as life bonding friendship should provide serious benefits.

yes, but the Constitutional issue is not settled. doesn't make much sense for Congress to be able to limit an executive powhar unless is a power Congress granted to the executive branch. SCOTUS could very well decide, and with more than a little justification, that the President may indeed wave a magic wand and declassify documents at any time and on a whim. trump, over and over and over again showed how in spite o' behaviours being unthinkable and even arguable illegal, as the head o' the executive branch, including the department o' justice, the only meaningful limit on the President is impeachment. trump pulls out a ****tail napkin dated january 19, 2020 or has some kroney back up the silliness that trump declassified anything and everything which were being packed and sent to mar-a-lago might sound ridiculous, but is not a ludicrous legal argument to be making. the thing is, there is no need for the doj to counter the blanket classification defense. the identified statutes in the search warrant do not mention classified documents. am thinking that were not an oversight on the part o' merrick garland. make 18 U.S. Code § 1924 the basis for warrant and assuming probable cause as a necessary prerequisite for the search would be undermined if the Court decided the President had indeed declassified everything. is not clear regardless o' how stoopid it feels and in spite o' how many lawyers has said a President can't declassify on a whim... 'cause the opposite might very well be the case. HA! Good Fun!

... so, she is on the PUP list? regardless, am hopeful she just needs deal with a bit o' a limp and perhaps a severe diminished frisbee/ball catch radius. good luck. HA! Good Fun!

the classified/declassified part is a bit of a red herring. those documents the national achieves has been attempting to retrieve since 2021 aren't trump's property regardless if they are classified or not. the security risk presented by having such documents stored at a hotel exists whether they are technically classified or not. the most obvious legal problem for trump, and this only came to light recently, is that the national archives attempted to retrieve those documents which do not belong to trump and trump's people assured the feds that all relevant documents had already been returned. the criminal liability hurdle is that trump needs to have some provable intent to 1) hurt the US or 2) share the intelligence with foreign powers if you are trying to criminalize the x-President under the espionage act for possession o' intelligence documents. having the documents at mar-a-lago, while not good, is unlikely gonna be what leads to a criminal charge, 'cause seems improbable one will be able to prove trump took and retained US intelligence resources 'cause he were trying to burn the US. show trump is a petty narcissist and he didn't wanna give up his toys? sure. prove he were intending to screw the US or had plans to sell or share secrets with foreign powers is not same. the thing is, willful concealing or destruction o' such intelligence documents may also be criminalized. after the warrant were executed, has become increasing apparent trump and his people were very much aware they had documents which were rightful the property o' the US and trump were not returning those documents voluntarily. trump brought up declassification as an excuse/defense and most persons in the media, and even a few lawyers, made the mistake o' responding as if the classification status could be meaningful. don't get distracted. classification status should not be meaningful. knowledge of trump and those in his orbit that there were documents which properly belongs to the US and trump and his people did willful retain such documents in spite o' multiple attempts by the national archives to retrieve is gonna be where trump is most vulnerable... if the doj wants to take it so far. perhaps the main point o' the search warrant were to finally retrieve the remaining documents, which in our mind is already a win, but trump turned the situation into a political p00p storm. is ironic but perhaps the political furor trump ignited might lead to charges which previous coulda' been considered a secondary concern for doj. no matter what, the intelligence needed to be required, particular (assuming nyt and washington post reporting is accurate) once mar-a-lago security footage showed multiple persons accessing the s'posed secure documents. is possible doj woulda' been happy to let the issue go quiet as long as they felt confident no more state secrets were in trump's tiny hands. am not sure if the 8/26 situation allows for a quiet resolution. HA! Good Fun!

scholarships should be awarded through the kurgan method kidding... mostly. HA! Good Fun!