Blog Your Current Game

jmotivator said:

I enjoyed it, but the number of randomly appearing non-mechs got rather frustrating after a while.

Click to expand...

Yeah, every single mission seemed to have infinite respawning enemies that appear more or less randomly around you. Just poof, out of nowhere. I didn't make it far into that game.

Big new patch for No Mans Sky, and now it is a city builder...

I've been playing a lot of Hadean Tactics as I wait for Diablo 2 to launch. Hadean Tactics is a really cool hybrid of a Slay The Spire and an Auto-chess game.

I play it a lot but I am awful at it. Haven't won a game yet. Made it to stage 3 once and got wiped by the boss hilariously fast.

I guess, in THEORY, I need to play long enough to unlock cards... or something, but I'm guessing other people are winning regularly. I mean, sure, there is some RNG to consider, and building a good deck is hard. But I've had maybe three really good decks that just fall apart rapidly.

I think my biggest weakness is I get tunnle vision. When I find a deck that works I try to shoehorn every playthrough into that deck. Need to adapt.

I won my first game, finally.

As usual, I won on a start that I was sure would be over when I started. It was that resignation that made me pick a seemingly useless card that randomly replaced my hand with other cards.

The first time I used that card it filled my hand with traps, a card that I quickly learned I was criminally underrating. I had assumed that traps disappear the first time you trigger them but they don't. THey stay there for the whole combat, and triggers only trigger the trap they spawned from... nope. The traps are there for the whole battle, and triggers trigger all traps.

So after realizing that, I started hording every trap card that came available, and by the last battle I had my team grouping over healing and shield traps and the enemy crowded over decay and damage traps, and just kept playing all of the triggers until I won.

The End.

Just finished Cathedral of the Deep last night in Dark Souls 3.


WW

Stellaris has a new update, this game has gone through huge changes throughout the years and plays very differently to what it started out as.

This update has added a "Pleasure Seekers" civic that allows for a "decadent lifestyle" living standard. In fact, this makes decadent lifestyle really the only living standard to consider, as it is just vastly superior to any other living standards. It comes with a huge +20% happiness bonus to all populations with only a small increase in consumer goods upkeep. Happier pops improve planet stability which improves output, so essentially this standard pays for itself as your producers of consumer goods actually become more productive while also boosting production of every other job in your empire.

There's an ascension perk called "Nihilistic Acquisition," which allows you to abduct populations from a planet rather than killing them when engaging in orbital bombardment. It requires either an Authoritarian or Xenophobic government ethic as these two ethics are allowed to enslave aliens. (or, for Authoritarians, even their own citizens with the slaver guild civic) In fact, Xenophobic empires cannot grant full citizenship to aliens.

However, Authoritarian empires can actually grant full citizenship to aliens and oddly enough Nihilistic Acquisition is not incompatible with Xenophile.

The result?

Authoritarian - Xenophiles that abduct aliens into mandatory full-citizen decadent lifestyles. It's likely that many of the abducted will actually be happier on my planets than their old ones. LUXURY SPACE COMMUNISM IS MANDATORY, CITIZEN.

As stated in another thread, playing D2 has sort of rekindled my interest in D3, and I have picked it up again. I find it pretty interesting, as a cognitive study, to return to a game I put down years later, especially a mix/max ARPG, and evaluate the state of my theorycraft at the time I moved on. I find an inordinate amount of satisfaction in reorganizing my inventories, addressing my load out for weaknesses, jettisoning stash that I was holding onto, probably for weird sentimental reasons that have since evaporated, and return to a cohesive, clean, organized direction.

Also, I have to applaud the very careful balancing at the core of D3 that is disguised as an exponential power creep. Years ago when I set D3 down I had hit a wall with my main Barbarian as my MIN/MAX balance had fallen into Below-Average/Below-Average. Interestingly, all the tools I needed to break through my stall at Torment 12 was already in my inventory, but I had just been missin it. Also, most of my real ahang-ups, it seems, a few years ago revolved around mostly conveniences.. I was locked into a 2-piece set for the effect that it made won of my skills permanent.. but if I was even halfway digent to keep the spell up, I could change out that 2 piece set for much higher DPS.

I'm sure I will find much the same issue when I start evaluating my main alt, the Paladin... if I recall, my goal years ago was to develop a Paladin build where I would literally have to do nothing (all Thorns and On-hit procs), but abandoned that as unworkable. I probably missed some key element.

For lack of other compelling game options, I plan of doing a full pass of all of my D3 Characters before moving on and doing the same with POE. It's been so long since I last touched eiter game that there is a ton of new stuff to work with and consider.

During a recent long illness I picked up D3 again for a bit. Got a seasonal hardcore wizard up to para 682 (for now). Extended my survivability with trading DPS for shields (I'd been kinda thinking about the balance wrong). Since the char is hardcore, I favor survivability a bit more. (For example, I have 3 life savers: paladin follower ability, firebird's ability, and passive ability... just in case a lagstorm combines with inattention or something). I'm sitting in T16 for rifts. A bit higher for greater rifts. May do actual pushing later, but I start to get horribly bored when I'm at the point where whether or not I complete the GR in time depends on GR make-up/layout. I have absolutely no interest in hunting for the "right" GRs, even though they have largely improved that. I stick more to bringing chars up to a pretty decent point. You'll never see me in GR 100 let alone 120.

Part of that, though, is the introduction of ethereal weapons to this season. They're absurdly powerful..just look it up if you want to know.


Essentially: Ethereal occulus w/ Power Hungry passive.
Firebirds: helm, off-hand, gloves, feet, legs.
Aughild's: chest, bracers
Belt: Herbrash's Binding (main key: disintegrate cost reduced by 58% - combines beautifully with the cuirass)
Jewelry: convention, SOJ, and a leg amulate (Mara's Kaleidosscope, but that's just because it was the best I've found. Not sure which to aim for).
Shoulders: Mantle of Channeling

Gems: Teaguk 76, Bane of the Trapped 77, Pain enhancer 76% (at some point I may have to switch to Bane of the Stricken.... depends... enhancer helps clearing bosses/trash, and it's a question of how much time I'm spending generating the boss and how much the boss takes).
Cube: RORG, Furnace, Aquila Cuirass (50% damage reduction with primary resource above 90%.

Skills: Blur, Unstable Anomaly, Audacity, Unwavering will.

Between the various skills and arcane power on crit, etc, I'm pretty much always right around 97-100% resource, which means I've got 50% damage reduction from cuirass, another 17% from Blur, a bunch of reduction from elite damage, etc. I got shields going (ie, Energy Armor with prismatic armor). Another 25% reduced damage while channeling. Oh, right, and my weapon reduces damage done by enemies hit by 25% for 5 sec. I can basically stand there and face tank everything, only occasionally having to do a hurried teleport or two (say...my arcane power slips below 90% for some reason or perhaps an elite pack has that detonation on death thing..)


I may try replacing the rings with Focus and Restraint, but I need trifecta or something close. The ones are found are meh. I also have to brush up on how damage bonuses work. With both of Focus and Restraint's bonus going, I should be another +100% damage. But is that additive or multiplicative?

Meanwhile, my SOJ has 20% fire skills and 25% to elites; convention is 200% damage to elements on rotation, and while I'm just about always using fire (firebird's disintegrate w/ the one fire version of the skill going), that 200% comes around a couple times at least on the GR boss and speeds things up.

I did start a few others I want to play around with.. barb, monk, witch doctor. I especially want to try this build that goes around items and gems that combine to massively increase bonuses from legendaries provided you have no set items. That's one thing that always drives me away from D3....sets. **** sets. I hope there aren't any in D4.





But how do people get to like...GR120, 130? How? The math obviously has to work. I suppose if you are attentive enough and lag-free enough to never get hit....

Ethereal:





Silly, huh?

Mr Person said:

Ethereal:

View attachment 67358041



Silly, huh?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I wish they didn't vanish at the end of the season. Also, I thought I was just super unlucky when I got an Ethereal drop in the first 10 minutes of playing my Season character but it turns out that it is pretty common because of the weird way that Ethereals work.

There are 21 Ethereals, and they exist in the legendary loot table from the start. The weirdness comes in when you consider that actual legendary loot table is rather short at low level, so a large percentage of the low level loot table is filled with Ethereal weapons, meaning there is a very high chance of your first legendary drop will be an Ethereal weapon.

So people looking for the Ethereal achievement now farm at level 12... which seems to defeat the purpose of Ethereals.

Mr Person said:

I did start a few others I want to play around with.. barb, monk, witch doctor. I especially want to try this build that goes around items and gems that combine to massively increase bonuses from legendaries provided you have no set items. That's one thing that always drives me away from D3....sets. **** sets. I hope there aren't any in D4.

Click to expand...

With Legacy of Dreams being a Multiplicative bonus, it's possible to get some insane base damage bonuses. A level 25 LoD gem would grant a 27 times damage bonus to whatever set bonus you have on damage and a flat 50% damage reduction.

Since Unity is pretty much the most essential item in all late game builds, you'd end up with a flat 87.5% damage reduction before other mitigation.

That actually doesn't seem that daunting, and rather deadly.

I might try that out on a Thorns build for my Crusader. I always wanted a build where I didn't have to do anything.

So I ran some tests with the Legacy of Dreams gem that I leveled to 38 last night.

The one thing that really bothers me is that it seems to work, but the Details section of the Character sheet doesn't appear to register it's effect. The only damage bonus I see register on my character stats is the +Damage from the Str on the ring it's in.

That being said, when I use the gem with no set bonuses I do get crits over a billion damage, so it must be working....

I'm not a big fan of black box mechanisms in Min/Max games, though, so I don't like assuming that it's working without feedback in the character Details screen.

Final point: The details on this effect also seem off. At level 38 the gem says it ads 164% damage per Legendary item, and double that for Ancients... which is a bit more than I expected per-item. but then it was also +104% at level zero, so maybe they raised the minimum bonus but made the per-level more gradual?

I don't know... more testing!

Also: For clarity, the LoD gem bonuses per Legendary item are additive within the LoD non-set bonus, but that aggregated bonus is multiplicative with skill based bonuses. So if a skill does 6000% Weapon damage, and your weapon does 2000 damage then a LOD non-set bonus of 4000% would yield 60x40x2000=4,800,000 base damage. Critical hit damage is also a separate multiplicative bonus, which is how you get crits into the billions of damage.

If it were additive to skill bonuses it would be (60+40)2000=200,000 damage

To sum up, this gem scales insanely with the right legendary ancients and skills.

Major update 5 for Satisfactory hot experimental today. Mostly QOL improvements, but some are super-awesome(Being able to chain draw ramps is HUGE!!!).

So at Paragon 582 I finally cracked GR 70 with my Barbarian. No big feat, for sure, but it was a goal I had set for myself to achieve before re-evaluating how much time to spend playing.

I might continue, I might not.

It turns out I was just misdiagnosing my weaknesses. I had been running GR69 and dying repeatedly to mobs that would CC me, and wit the Whirlwind build most of the damage mitigation comes from maintaining the whirlwind (75% reduction off the non-mitigated amount). So I was invincible while moving, dead meat when I stopped.

I made two changes to the build.. 1) Dropped the +25% damage, -%25 damage Kanai bonus in favor of -50% Damage, and 2) Went full Waste Gear so I could drop Ring of Royal Grandeur in favor of Unity. With those two changes I raised my damage mitigation standing still to almost what my mitigation was while channeling Whirlwind.. so now the CC effects would become nail-biters rather than death sentences. After that it got pretty easy.

After defeating GR70, I can now go back to farming T13 for fun and profit.

jmotivator said:

With Legacy of Dreams being a Multiplicative bonus, it's possible to get some insane base damage bonuses. A level 25 LoD gem would grant a 27 times damage bonus to whatever set bonus you have on damage and a flat 50% damage reduction.

Since Unity is pretty much the most essential item in all late game builds, you'd end up with a flat 87.5% damage reduction before other mitigation.

That actually doesn't seem that daunting, and rather deadly.

I might try that out on a Thorns build for my Crusader. I always wanted a build where I didn't have to do anything.

Click to expand...

Hmmm...I'll have to think about that as I push on my hardcore Sorc: unity - I already have "cannot die" on my follower because it's a paladin or whatever he's called and I needed that livesaver skill (20) there without break - but It'd take away from convention of the elements. Now the latter is limited for my build (fire), but that fire boost (200% ring, believe it or not. BIS on that front) really knocks some time off a GR guardian. However, I suspect I'm going to need more defense and soon - the moment I push higher. As it is, I can basically face-tank 97% of everything at G76, provided my arcane doesn't drop below the threshold (91%). Drop below, my toughness drops several mil.

I'm not at the point when I"m counting seconds, even minutes. At GR76 (T16?) I"m basically farming GRs for gems for alts. I'll push a bit up soon, methinks. BUT, I'm always more cautious with hardcore because womp-womp if there's lag or you are a temporary idiot.

I'll have to way unity + what I put in place of the Aquila defense portion of the build. Thing is...then I should probably get more crap that builds around unity. I'm trying the unity me/follower on the barb. We'll see. I suspect I"ll get bored and wander off before I work anything meaningful out.

Mr Person said:

Hmmm...I'll have to think about that as I push on my hardcore Sorc: unity - I already have "cannot die" on my follower because it's a paladin or whatever he's called and I needed that livesaver skill (20) there without break - but It'd take away from convention of the elements. Now the latter is limited for my build (fire), but that fire boost (200% ring, believe it or not. BIS on that front) really knocks some time off.

I'm not at the point when I"m counting seconds, even minutes. At GR76 (T16?) I"m basically farming GRs for gems for alts. I'll push a bit up soon, methinks. BUT, I'm always more cautious with hardcore because womp-womp if there's lag or you are a temporary idiot.

I'll have to way unity + what I put in place of the Aquila defense portion of the build. Thing is...then I should probably get more crap that builds around unity. I'm trying the unity me/follower on the barb. We'll see. I suspect I"ll get bored and wander off before I work anything meaningful out.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I would not experiment with LoD on a hardcore character mainly because the LoD bonuses are frustratingly not used in the displayed characteristics. I only get feedback based on how I perform in a fight. Up at the 70+ the "it didn't work" is determined by insta-death.

So the general rule I've deciphered is that Elemental bonuses are added together, and skill bonuses are added together, and set bonuses are added together, and then those separate aggregates are multiplied in order against weapon damage. SO, the short answer is you need to tally all of your bonuses from those three sources to best judge where the best boost will come from. If you focus entirely on, say, elemental damage then more elemental damage might not be the best upgrade. Going from 300% to 400% fire damage is a 25% increase, while 300% fire damage with additional 100% skill damage would double your damage.

My LoD at level 59 (?) adds about 150% bonus per legendary, and 300% per Ancient. With mostly legendaries his Ivory Tower proc crits well over 1 billion. Once I complete his Valor set I can fairly judge set-v-LoD bonuses since that set will give a slat 20,000% bonus to Fist of Heaven.

Nowhere else to post this, but I'm not actually playing the game at the moment...

I was today years old when I learned that in the old NES game Duck Hunt the 2nd controller allowed a second player to control the ducks...

Mind. Blown.

jmotivator said:

Nowhere else to post this, but I'm not actually playing the game at the moment...

I was today years old when I learned that in the old NES game Duck Hunt the 2nd controller allowed a second player to control the ducks...

Mind. Blown.

Click to expand...

I've heard about that, but never actually tried it. I should give it a try and see if it's any good as a two player game.

Mr Person said:

Hmmm...I'll have to think about that as I push on my hardcore Sorc: unity - I already have "cannot die" on my follower because it's a paladin or whatever he's called and I needed that livesaver skill (20) there without break - but It'd take away from convention of the elements. Now the latter is limited for my build (fire), but that fire boost (200% ring, believe it or not. BIS on that front) really knocks some time off a GR guardian. However, I suspect I'm going to need more defense and soon - the moment I push higher. As it is, I can basically face-tank 97% of everything at G76, provided my arcane doesn't drop below the threshold (91%). Drop below, my toughness drops several mil.

I'm not at the point when I"m counting seconds, even minutes. At GR76 (T16?) I"m basically farming GRs for gems for alts. I'll push a bit up soon, methinks. BUT, I'm always more cautious with hardcore because womp-womp if there's lag or you are a temporary idiot.

I'll have to way unity + what I put in place of the Aquila defense portion of the build. Thing is...then I should probably get more crap that builds around unity. I'm trying the unity me/follower on the barb. We'll see. I suspect I"ll get bored and wander off before I work anything meaningful out.

Click to expand...

"rop below, my toughness drops several mil." was supposed to say "rop below, my toughness drops several hundred mil."

Max is 800,000,000+ on the sorc. (l77 Taeguk full charge + all the rest)

Realized last the other night during my Dark Souls 3 playthrough that I'm at level 159 using a dex build. Really worried about the double demon fight (Demon of Pain and Demon of - well something else) toward the later part of The Ringed City DLC. So I pulled out the Black Knight Sword +5 and ringed up. Since one demon focused on toxic and the other fire and then the second phase was mostly fire, I focused on fire protection.

The plan was jump in with both feet for a first run, focus on taking down the toxic demon as fast as possible to maximize the impact of fire protection for the second demon and phase 2. Didn't do bad, died of course but made it through to phase 2 and actually got the Demon Prince down to 50% health before getting smashed. That was encouraging, so ember'd up, called in two NPCs (Slave Night Gael and Knight Lapp) for a second run. The three of us together just wrecked their shit. By the end of phase 1 both NPC's still had 2/3 of their health going into phase 2 so I knew we were doing good. Let them take the front and I worked to stay to the rear and it worked great. Glad to say all 3 of us survived the encounter. Very rewarding, now to explore the city further.

For Elden Ring it seems very good. Watched the network test (I think it still has sessions this weekend) posted by Fextralife and FightingCowboy. Think Dark Souls 3 (mechanics) meets Skyrim (open world). My thought was "Darkrim" or maybe "Sky Souls". LOL

WW

As a childhood fan of Halo I decided to pick up Halo Infinite on Steam. I haven't really followed the franchise since H4 back in 2012 so I missed Halo 5, though I'm told it was probably for the better.

I was also excited for Bf2042, but I've heard the game sucks as is. Frankly I feel like this is come to be the norm for Battlefield; shitty launches hopefully followed by months of patches that eventually make it playable.

But Infinite; the core game play is good. There are things that I'm not used to; the little movements like sliding and the new weapons. The TTK is lot a shorter and the movement is faster, so that's another thing I'm still getting used to.

A lot of the problems though are part of the non-gameplay elements. The progression system is poorly thought out, and customization is strangely limited, and the matchmaking system is inflexible.

Still, I like it. Hopefully the full game irons these out.

A minor annoyance: with most "3D" games, like ESO, relative size does not exist. You're way above the city (Orsinium", you go in a door (Hyaldion's Potiions & Elixirs), and you leave through the bottom-level exit just 20 feet down and.......

....you're 100+ feet down.

NBD, mostly, because I worry about how to get from here to there, not whether it makes sense. But still. In a game where I like to stop and look around, doing nothing, just looking at things... I'd rather it make more sense.

When I first started playing Planetside 2 back in 2013, the cosmetics like camos and helmets were exclusively for paid customers only. Now it seems theyre bringing stuff out like this, and you can get them for free, provided you grind.

This year's Halloween directive was definitely a keeper: a brand new camo and its pretty damn good. I grinded it out for two of my characters and it came out really nice. In fact, it's way better than most of the paid camos you can buy.

Here it is for my TR and VS characters:

PoS said:

When I first started playing Planetside 2 back in 2013, the cosmetics like camos and helmets were exclusively for paid customers only. Now it seems theyre bringing stuff out like this, and you can get them for free, provided you grind.

This year's Halloween directive was definitely a keeper: a brand new camo and its pretty damn good. I grinded it out for two of my characters and it came out really nice. In fact, it's way better than most of the paid camos you can buy.

Here it is for my TR and VS characters:

Click to expand...

I tried playing Planetside 2 again a few weeks ago, but I can't get past the "Reset you Password" level.

There are some games and game companies, and Planetside 2 seems the worst (even compared to Blizzard) that treat account/password security more seriously than my bank and brokerage do! Planetside 2 apparently rolled out some "Mother's Maiden Name" style password recovery and none of my 30 or so standard challenge/Responses work.. which convinces me I never set them. And they won't unlock my account now without me providing them WAY more PII then I'm comfortable giving them.

By the way, as a side note for tips on account security from an IT security guy: When you have to select Challenge/Response questions for future Password reset requests, don't enter the actual true answer to the question. Make up a fake maiden name, or street you grew up on, and burn it into your memory. It's too easy, especially if you are chatty on facebook, for hackers to guess those answers if they are true, and impossible if they are false.