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Minor update:

I was able to find some clothing items with bonuses attached to them, but none of them appear to be essential. I have been told by people defending the patch decision that body armor does add armor to your character, which makes it more useful than a swimsuit, but...

As an example: my Cyberware-based armor rating is ~800. The flak vest I found adds 20 armor. So that flak vest is 2.5% better at stopping incoming damage than a T-Shirt.
 
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I've been playing around this evening with the new DARKTIDE patch and it's rather good. They have improved every aspect of the game considerably.

The new skill trees are designed to create 3 archetypes for each class so that each archetype performs very differently. These archetypes are the usual Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Tank .. at least not across all classes. Some classes are CC, others excel at single target.

So far my favorite little change was to grenades in the game. The three classes that have grenades now have a selection of grenades they can specialize in that have a big effect in the game. That said, the Ogryn class grenade selection is kind of comically lopsided with one grenade being absurdly better than the other two.

In the old game the Ogryn's grenade was a grenade crate, and just did high damage to a single target. You could spec into a skill that made the box break open and spred grenades around to di high single target and then an AOE for weaker targets, but few people took that skill because there were better options to use that tier's skill point.

That skill is now one the the three options, but it's not the best option. The best option if the giant frag grenade that can kill pretty much any enemy in the game, and when specced correctly has a nuke-sized blast radius. The only limiting factor is that the frag nuke on has 1 grenade, but if you are playing the Ogryn there and like lots of small explosions there are plenty of range weapons for that.

After giving it a test run, I think I'll be playing Darktide again for a while. It's a fun and frenetic game with some of the best atmosphere in modern games.
 
More Darktide observations, mainly changes to the game I like...

1) The developers FINALLY pooled all of the resources your various characters earn into a single pot. My build for a Psycher was scrapped before this patch because early game Psycher in the old system was awful. With pooled resources you can now help your low level characters out by supplying them with the best weapons and upgrades you need for your build. Because of this I gave the Psycher a new try.

2) Psychers are now actually Psychers in the early game. You get more early Psycher skills that aren't tied to a staff. I can now alternate between a meaningful Psycher attacks and an Alternate weapon that isn't a staff to help keep from overloading with warp heat.

Psycher Toughness and health from the start of your character are nerfed because you are filling the role of glass canon. The problem was that Psycher powers were mostly gated behind various staffs that didn't unlock until mid game... so early game you were stuck with being a sub-par Veteran Sharpshooter who could occasionally cause a mob's head to explode.

3) Every class now has 3 ultimate skills to choose from and those skills have boost traits that change them considerable. For instance, in the old game a Psycher had an ultimate that essentially dropped Warp heat and knocked down enemies... fairly boring. The new ultimate version of that skill can also be modified to set all of the affected enemies on fire... a plus!

4) Likewise there are three Ultimate passive trees per class that change how you play for class considerably. In my experience these trees seem someone less differentiating because some classes have basically one must have track of the three. Psychers can choose either to have a high chance to get infinite Psycher abilities for a long period or... two others, why bother even reading them.

So all this to say they finally figured out how to get me to try out a Psycher and I kind of like it.

Still not as comfortable with the class as I am with the Sharpshooter or Ogryn.
 
I've been playing DARKTIDE with my spare time this week and finally hit max level with my Psycher.

It's a testament to the quality of the character design that, now that all of my characters have leveled and gotten decent gear, I don't know which character to play from mission to mission.

Before the latest patch the Psycher was just not fun for me to play. It was way too plate-spinny for me having to always pay attention to your warp heat to keep from exploding. The early game was a pain because you just didn't have any warp skills much worth using, and late game players who played the class spent a lot of time on cool down (to keep from exploding)

Now Psycher holds its own with my favorite classes, and not only does the skill tree make warp heat management doable, my build is a Jack-of-All-Trades, master-of-all-Trades now.

In then old game every class excelled at one task (CC, Ranged DPS, melee, Tank) now they can all excel at all or most tasks. They all have something in their skill tree that you can spec to to do practically anything.

The only class that has a real best-in-class skill is Ogryn, who is hands down the best tank. Between the massive health pool and speccable number of wounds, they just stay up way longer than any other class. Add to that their equipable Shield and they can hold their own against anything. There is a special enemy called a demonhost that sits on the floor mumbling to herself when you encounter her, and if you don't have an Ogryn with a Slab Shield in the squad you do everything you can to walk around her without aggroing. With anything but the best geared squad, waking a demonhost with a team that doesn't had the Ogryn+shield means two members of the team will likely die (and only two because the demonhost vanishes after two kills). With a Shield ogryn everyone lives.

The Veteran class is still the most comfortable for most people. Playing a Veteran is mostly standard FPS shooter mechanics with the real skill coming from learning target prioritization. All classes need to learn melee mechanics, but the Veteran and the Psycher, when played right, only need to resort to melee during "Oh Shit!" moments.

The Zealot class is primarily melee based and somewhat tanky, but they also have some cool ranged weapons to pick from, including the flamethrower that only they can equip. I find a lot of Zealots equip the flamethrower because it's the one ranged weapon that is uniquely theirs, but even then most will spend all their time rushing to melee range.

My favorite part of the game after patch is the Psycher skill "Assail". Assail is one of the alternative skills that they added as alternatives to the starter skill and it's just so much fun. With Assail you equip yourself with floating crystal shards that you fire out at targets, They follow a rather wild trajectory towards where you are pointing your cursor, homing in on it and piercing it for high damage, it will them automatically target the next nearest target and it it too. The skill is just fun, but it is also hands down the best defense against one of the most annoying mobs in the game: Pox Hounds.

Pox Hounds let off a how before they enter the battlefield, and they are fast and very maneuverable. When they pounce on a player they hold them down and slowly devour them unless another player kills the hound. They will often come in packs and can end a run all by themselves. If a pack takes down all players it's mission over. That is why Assail is so useful. SO long as the Psycher catch sight of the hound, or the hound pack, a flurry of assail shards will obliterate a pack of hounds.

Playing a Veteran, Ogryn or Zealot I'd rather not play hound-heavy missions, as a Psycher I prefer it.

Also, I had my first solo carry as a Psycher this morning, where all of my team was downed and captured and I had to play the game by myself and fight through hordes to get to them and rescue them. Felt so good!

I love this game.

(It's still on sale on Steam for $26.00)
 
My son is playing Hogwarts Legacy, so Im just watching him, and occasionally help out with the puzzles. I wasnt into Harry Potter so I dont know too much about the whole franchise, but after seeing this, it looks interesting, and I might want to play it too.

 
I've been playing through Diablo IV season 2 this week and it is oddly entertaining and disappointing.

The biggest issue I have is with the major overhaul of the damage system. Essentially they got rid of the multiplicative-vs-additive damage buckets, at least as far as the item attributes go.


The end result is all of the additive bonuses in the game can kind of compete with the ubiquitous Crit+Crit-Chance+Vulnerable based builds in the game. This greatly expands the available build types.

The trouble starts when you consider the number of second order item stats that are still, unavoidably, multiplicative like attack speed, cooldowns and raw damage. This now makes 1H weapons preferable to 2H weapons, and attack speed stats and bonuses preferable to pretty much everything.

I guess that is just the reality of a Min/Max game. The game Meta will always exist, and there will always be a best in slot or best build in class.

It's kind of the wild west now with everyone hunting for the best build, which is what I find entertaining.
 
Do you feel they went too far in turning up XP gains? I find that XP just comes in super fast with season 2. What do you think of the season 2 mechanics? I kinda find them pretty decent. None of the powers are overpowered, but they do make a real difference. I kinda like the Blood Harvest events that really give you a reason to spend time on the main map.
 

I would normally say they have the XP gains over tuned, but then I think back to the leveling gem in D3 and realize that the pace in D4 is slow in comparison.

I remember when I had that leveling gem maxed to level 25 I could take a character from level 1 to level cap in a couple of hours when I combined that gem with the other gem that set level requirements for any weapon to 1.

As for what I like: I do really like the Blood Harvest event and I spend most of my time in it. I'm playing a Necromancer this time around and have pieced together a rather nice Bone Storm/Corpse Explosion build that works rather well.

The Blood Harvest event is so lucrative that going back to Nightmare dungeons seems like a chore, but I'm at the point where I need those Paragon Board glyphs leveled to progress. I just wish you could get the same crafting materials in Blood Harvest that you get in the nightmare events. My fixation on Blood Harvest ahs left me short on crafting supplies.

Also, I have a hairbrained meme build I've been theory crafting that would probably work better for a rogue than a Necromancer, but would be pretty fun if it works. I think it's possible to make a Necromancer that uses only Base attack and ultimate ability but I need to collect all the materials and gear for it so it's only a build in theory since I haven't completed my current kit yet.

And finally, storage is still stupidly small.. I find I run out of room in storage when I'm gearing only ONE character but Blizzard expects me to share that storage across ALL characters. It's insane... I want to start a second character but I literally don't have the storage.
 
Made a bit of a rambling video about the progress I'm making on a Necromancer build early this morning. Other than getting kicked off the server at one point it went fairly smoothly! lol

Anyway, it just goes over the basics of my Necro build.. I ended up forgetting to point out something that is obvious in when you watch it: This is a no-minion build.

The video will be available tomorrow at 1PM

Again, no frills, just straight ramble, no script and an upload. I mostly did this to try and shake out as many "Uh"s as I could. I think I made some progress.
 


No shit.

When I was going to Navy Instructor school we used to have to bring a hammer with us when we were doing practice presentations.
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Every time you said "uh" you had to smack the hammer down on a finger of your off hand. If you ran out of fingers (because you were to stupid to learn) you had to switch hands.


WW
ATC(AW/NAC)
USN Ret.
 
I look forward to it!
 
"A" school instructor? And I never knew you was an AT. I was an AQ.
 
Redress said:
"A" school instructor? And I never knew you was an AT. I was an AQ.
Click to expand...

AVIC-7

Student = '84
Instructor = '85-'88
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Also, you know what "no shit" means.


WW
 
WorldWatcher said:
AVIC-7

Student = '84
Instructor = '85-'88
.
.
.
Also, you know what "no shit" means.


WW
Click to expand...
That was the "C" school? I heard that was pretty intense. I only did the A school and AFTA(rent-a-crow).
 

I do a lot of public speaking and presentation, the Uhs mostly come from the new format. That first presentation was just me saying "**** it" and turning on record. This video is probably twice as long with less than half the uhs.
 
Redress said:
I look forward to it!
Click to expand...

I got an interesting drop at the end of the recording that at the time I thought would make a good build... I messed around with it off camera and it didn't work.
5 minutes later this dropped, though, so now I feel like I need to do something with it because it's ridiculous.




I think it's time to start a Barbarian....
 
I ended up watching the video I published and realized that I forgot to go over the paragon board. Oh the shame.

I reshot the video so I could discuss the paragon board just because I referenced it a few times so I should probably show it, it will go live tonight once the upload and render complete... it's probably the more informative version, but since this is all for fun I went ahead and published the one with the omission of the paragon board anyway.
 
So I was working on building a Druid for the first time in Diablo 4. I had avoided making the druid for a few reasons since launch.

The first reason was the look. I couldn't wrap my head around a fat druid. It seemed more like a forced body positivity nod...

The second issue was how slooooooooow the class starts... or started. At launch this class was torture to play in the early levels. After level 50 or so it apparently picked up, mainly after the Tier 3 uniques became available.

The second issue solved itself in Season 2 due to the fast start and fast leveling. Being able to run Pulverize from level one is a game changer.

I got over my first issue by embracing the guy who looks like he ate nature but making a fairly convincing imitation of DJKhaled... a quick google of Diablo 4 wiki of the Diablo Pantheon and DJKorlic was born.

THe druid is a pretty interesting class all told. It is the poster child for the best-in slot issues in Diablo 4 meta. Up until you graduate to World Tier 3 you are a Werebear Pulverize/Overpower build or you are losing. On hitting Tier 3 you are just sticking with Pulverize/overpower until you get the Staff of the Crone at which point you completely overhaul your whole build to Werewolf/Crit and you stay there the rest of the game.

The DPS that a Crone Staff Werewolf puts out using nothing but their basic attack is insane. You can literally down bosses many levels above you using nothing but your primary attack. No resource budgeted, not even really any skill orders. When you are fully geared you only need to kick 1 button in every fight.

I'd call it broken but it seems to be working as designed since It's avoided numerous Blizzard nerf hammers even while there is ample numbers of videos of the power of the build... and the staff in question is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
 
This isn't a game thread, unless you count buying and installing hardware as a game...

Anyway, I have to marvel right now at how cheap storage is lately.

I just bought two 8TB Samsung 870 SATA SSDs for $330 each. That's insane.

To bring it back to gaming, I'm now going through the process of consolidating all of my Steam drives onto one of these disks. Not sure yet what I want to do with the other.
 
I was going to restart Fallout 4, but it crashed so many times....grrr. So I bought Fallout 76 for 8 bucks. Not in for team play, gonna do it solo as much as I can. Fun so far, but at only level 7, so I am pretty harmless...
 
I still play a lot of Arma III. I have over 4,500 hours in that game since it was released in 2013.

However, another game called Stranded: Alien Dawn caught my attention. It was released in April 2023.


There are three different objectives you can choose and three different environments. You can:
  • Crash land in a survival pod with up to four surivors. You have to set up camp, build shelter, find/grow food, and do what it takes to survive. More survivors may find your camp later. You will also be plagued with attacks from insects. Small at first, but growing in number. Or...
  • Up to a maximum of three colonists have decided that they want to buy their own planet. You will be faced with the same challenges as above, but you will have more resources and you will not have crashed. You may also trade with other ships in orbit. Or...
  • Six military operators are landing on a remote world to establish a listening post. You will have better resources (including armament) than the colonists on a trading mission or the survivors in a crash landing, but face bigger bug attacks more often.



The three different biomes include:
  • Temperate forest with deciduous trees and evergreens (like the screenshot from above);
  • Desert with cacti, shrubbery, camels, and very few trees;
  • Tropical swamp, with lots of vegetation, mud, and not particularly suited for agriculture.
You have to manage the environment for your survivors/colonists/military personnel to ensure they stay fed, happy, and safe. The AI is very good, and you may establish the priority of each individual has for each task. Including when they should sleep, work, or just do whatever they feel like doing to stay happy.

Each of the three has a different object that must be completed to consider it a victory.
  1. Each of the survivors must be transported off the planet, one by one. When the last survivor leaves, you win;
  2. You need to earn 2,000,000 credits to buy your own planet. Purchasing the planet is a victory; and
  3. Your team has to establish a listening post and establish contact, while fighting off wave after wave of bug attacks.
 
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Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the heads up.
 
With Blizzard dropping a patch yesterday that added 5 new rings to the game, I'm back to playing my Necromancer for a while, at least until I get the Necromancer ring to drop.

The Necromancer ring is essentially the most used Necro mechanic from Season 1. With the ring equipped you automatically cast corpse tendril, corpse explosion and raise skeleton in a short cooldown.

With that ring I will make some significant changes to my Necromancer build, removing Blight (since I don't need the crown pull effect) and my curse (since I don't need it's slow effect) in favor of the auto-cast Corpse Tendril.

That will free up 11 skill points which I will pump into corpse tendril and ... bone spear? With that ring I don't really need a core skill since all of my damage is done by the Always-on Bone Storm and Corpse explosions.

Of course, this all is predicated on getting the ring to drop, and it is a low drop rate on a boss that requires farmed materials to summon... so it may not happen before I get bored.
 
I've been playing Rise of Empires. The biggest part of the game is building your castle, legions through resource development in various ways. You are part of an alliance of other players, and compete in various seasonal campaigns.
 
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