Leofric

I've only played Fallout 4 for about an hour (screen was making me dizzy) and never went back.  But I have quickly watched the first three episodes of this show (after watching the latest Bad Batch) and am liking Lucy's, Maximus', and Coop's story lines so far, not sure about Norman's yet, waiting to see where that goes.   

Hadn't watched the trailers so Michael Rapaport and Michael Emerson were nice surprises.

3 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

That "woman" the big text refers to is Lady Jessica. Visual storytelling, Sucka!

And though Villeneuve doesn't "show us", Paul tells us after drinking the water of life. I've certainly been critical of the verbosity of the script but in this case it works. 

You mean the talk where she explicitly tells him "You must drink the water of life"? This shit's tha BOMB, son!

Paul's decision to go south was prompted by the destruction of Sietch Tabr and the Harkonnens "striking all over the north". Which means either:

a) We need to to take this to a whole other level

or

b) Shit just got real

Either way, not so random. 

The attack on Sietch Tabr triggers him to drink the Water of Life because, as he says in the movie, he had not foreseen the attack in his visions, it took him by surprise.   I've seen speculation that he didn't see it because it was planned by Feyd-Ruatha who had almost as much potential to be the "chosen one" as Paul through the breeding program.  He drank the water to strengthen his visions of the future.

Back in 2017, I was invited to a wedding in Kentucky the same weekend as that total eclipse, so I stayed an extra couple of days and witnessed that one.  It was pretty spectacular seeing the totality and my sister got some awesome photos of it.  

I will be nowhere near the path of the upcoming eclipse this time, so will miss it.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Book 4 of The War Against the Chtorr by David Gerrold was published in 1993. We still await Books 5 and 6, which Gerrold has reportedly been working on simultaneously (a draft of 5 was apparently complete and circulated to beta readers in 2015).

Wow, hadn't thought of those books in decades, still have the first 4 packed away somewhere.

The canisters filled with purple liquid found throughout the ship are highly explosive, collected them as you make your way to the bridge and drop them next to the two combatants and let the Ithillid take the commanders health down as much as he can before he dies, then ignite the canisters immediately.  May be enough to take him down.  Could also send Us in to add damage on the commander, if you freed him. 

On 1/7/2024 at 10:10 AM, Larry of the Lawn said:

Hey all.  Looking for some recommendations on Arctic and Antarctic exploration?  There are so many books out there and I'm looking to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Primary sources welcome.  Maybe not the best place to put this but seems like it might work?  

Eta: got Nansen's account of crossing Greenland and a book on Shackleton by Caroline Alexander requested at the library for next week.  

I gave my brother the Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk by Buddy Levy for Christmas, he had asked for it, so I haven't read it personally. It is the tale of a failed Arctic expedition in 1913 and the loss of the Karluk, a ship, after it got caught in an early winter freeze.   

17 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Breaking-Hell-Age-Bronze-Book/dp/1473232570?ref_=ast_author_dp

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-Black-Miles-Cameron-ebook/dp/B0CGY19QFH?ref_=ast_author_dp

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150247395-the-tainted-cup

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/124941442-sunbringer

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195790571-the-daughters-war

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60028924-the-trials-of-empire

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201930181-the-mercy-of-gods

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195790798-the-west-passage

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114067124-outlaw-empire

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144736989-the-silverblood-promise

 

Nice list.  All in for Miles Cameron x2, Nicholas Eames, Christopher Buehlman, and S.A. Corey.  Not familiar with the other authors, but they are in good company on this list so will keep an eye out.

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

But villains must always be given the chance to monologue.

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I didn't know that was an option. Anyway, it's done. Shadowheart with radiant guardian destroys all the bats and severely damages the others. I was already at level 12 with my characters. My Fighter character was dual-wielding longswords and just went to town on Cazador. Once Cazador is beaten, Astarion is freed and he can join the fight against the rest.

 

In my 2nd play where Astarion survived until Act III:

November 1st - All Saints Day

1458 - in a move no one was expecting, the Spanish Inquisition was established.

1952 - the U.S detonated the first hydrogen bomb

1955 - The Vietnam War started between North and South Vietnam.

I wonder if he is going to include the Watchers from the television series. 

4 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

That was fucking awesome on a whole lot of levels. Puppets! Missy Elliot (again!) Exploding dicks! The best representation of someone like Kellhus so far on TV! THE ADAPTATION OF TEK KNIGHTS STORY 

Also televison's Jason Ritter, brought to you by the letter K.

I have a couple thousand paperbacks stashed in my house and garage, collected over the last 50 years.  They are mostly stored in plastic bins, alphabetically by author.    I have converted to a kindle now, mainly for the sheer convenience of grabbing a new book any time day or night, but one of the things that spurred this transition was many publishers switching to the taller paperbacks that totally screwed over my storage system,  which annoyed me.   I still buy used paperbacks, the regular sized ones, but most of my new book purchases are now ebooks.

That article is interesting as I was a young teen having just burned through all of the science fiction and fantasy authors, Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Tolkein, Lewis etc. in my local libraries and finally had my own money from mowing lawns when DelRey books appeared to give me more reading material. 

58 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Okay, I know this wasn't intentional, but now I want to know what the Hellfire Club would be like in the Star Wars Universe...

Does this mean Thrawn is stranded in the our Galaxy, in the Milky Way, and Kevin Bacon is about to become canon in Star Wars as well as the Marvel Universe.

I do like the the new Snail people tribe that adopted Ezra, it's kind of fun to have a race of nomadic snails.   But it is annoying that they happen to be only a day's ride from the location that the Witches are hanging out, but Thrawn still needed to use Sabine to find Ezra.  But I guess that's better than having Sabine wandering the wilderness for several episodes looking for him.

Baylan is definitely rejecting the whole Jedi/Sith mindset and trying to find an older, deeper way to tap into the Force.

10 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

She's officially Sci-Fi Royalty, ya know.

Her proper title is The Radiant Aeryn Sun

6 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Have finally finished Solasta: Crown of the Magister, which was extremely fun and only in the end really started to outstay its welcome with a plot that, in the last act, put the pedal down like season 4 of Babylon 5 and just ran hard and fast towards the climax that never quite gels and wraps up rather abruptly without making much, if any, sense. 

Being turn-based (*gnashing teeth*), battles take way longer than I'd like, and the final third of the game has far more trashmob fights than I'd like, which seem to exist soley to either prolong the conclusion or help the party level up a bit in preparation for the DLCs. 

Still, at 35 hours, the game does what it sets out to do, if with a bit of roughness around the edges. The lore and background are very much tropey, generic high fantasy Tolkienesque stuff, and isn't what I'd call memorable, and the high level loot is far and few between. And if you want better gear - better learn to craft, as that's the best way to get +1 arrows, which very much come in handy during the more tedious matches between Sor-Akkath and your party of four (which you can pre-generate like in Icewind Dale, or, if you prefer, choose from pre-made characters). 

All in all, it's alright, for a turn-based RPG. And because it's all 3D, it lacks the hand-touched, painterly touch that I personally prefer in my rpgs. But it's fine. It's entertaining. It's well-made, bug-free, no patches needed to work, everything runs smoothly out of the box, and the game even features a dungeon maker that's apparently quite easy to use, and several post-campaign DLCs, for those that want to continue onwards to higher levels. 

It's got a quaint, mimicking teenagers doing shoddy voice-work with great passion kind of charm to it, which makes it feel very, well, charming. And ye gods, composer Maxime Herve does some terrific work in the game, and is worth acknowledging for the thunderous score he composed. 

I enjoyed this game a lot and  played it quite a bit last spring.  The DLC's are also good.  Lost Valley is a separate story that restarts you at level 1.   There are factions to play off of and more politics.   The Palace of Ice is for higher level characters and is a sequel to the original story.   You can carry over your original characters that finished the main game or you can start with new higher leveled characters that the DLC assumes had beaten original story.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Right, here we go. 90 hours, and the game's been technically behaving (apart from a TPK when the collision mesh failed and I plummeted through the floors of a dungeon, but at least that was saved by a quickload). 

Just took out:

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Viconia. That fight was total bullshit until I cheesed it by bunching on the entrance stairs and dropping multiple Walls of Fire. The followers of Shar, clearly not recruited for intelligence, came charging up through the flames and basically all killed themselves. The novices died instantly, the tougher justicar guys lasted 2 or maybe 3 rounds and Viconia alone survived, to be just butchered by my team ganging up on her.

Nice way to shit on character development from BG1 and BG2, Larian lads, but okay.

Now in the House of Hope. I don't think there's too much stuff left. I have to take down Orin and there's a few minor side-quests but otherwise it's then on to the finale.

 

 

  House Hope is a lot of fun.

Well up until the end Anakin was teaching her to be a warrior, a leader, and to fight, but the last thing she did was learning to stop fighting and not strike Anakin down, so that may be the lesson, and maybe that means she and Balon find a peaceful solution rather than fighting again and they join together against Thrawn and the Witch. 

Finally, finished my first play through after 154 hours, loved this game and felt it was pretty epic.  I don't have the complaints people had about the companions endings, mainly because, as I mentioned long ago, I walked out of the 1st act with only three companions, Shadowheart, Laezel and Wyll and did the whole game with just them (and Halsin for a bit).  and the ends of their three personal quests were pretty satisfying.

The rest of the companions  I never met or I ended up killing them or getting them killed:

This is actually a good thing as I have started a new game where I made sure to collect everyone as soon as possible and its opening up a ton more content for my next playthrough that I didn't see the first time around .   So another month or so of entertainment to get my money's worth, let alone trying an evil playthrough later. 

14 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Another thing the way Baylan employed his lightsaber seemed very… “Great Sword” like to me.  Short chopping strokes as though it had a lot of mass…

And Ashoka seemed to respond to that by only using one of her lightsabers so she could use both arms to block his heavy blows.

Man, this game can be unexpected brutal.  Some time after my successful visit to the Foundry, I ran into a couple in the bar in the Elfsong Tavern where I was had rented out rooms.    They were celebrating that their ne'er-do-well son Gaspar had finally gotten a real job with the Flaming Fist.  

The father was very proud, I knew this because I had seen a letter on Gaspar's body that mentioned this.    The mother was also proud, but she chose this moment to tell her husband that she was leaving him, running off with the very Fist who had recruited Gaspar.  I recognized the name of her lover too, as I had stood over her corpse as well.    I just turned and walked away without saying anything, knowing that their pride and dreams of the future were now all ash.

Since then I have tried to use non lethal damage on the lower level Fist soldiers, though there has still been some regrettable collateral damage. 

I heard him talking on the road when I was searching the barn east of the Pottery Place.   He kills one of his followers for not listening to  him about staying in the light of his lantern, but I walked up and we did the whole true soul recognition thing and then he invited me along.

I killed Marcus, but one of his pets scooped up Isobel the second she lost consciousness and flew off with her, leading to the collapse of her protection around the Inn and utter chaos that only Jaheira and my group survived.

I actually talked to Kar'niss and joined his convoy and he lead my group right into Moonrise Towers, with his lantern protects us through the shadows.

Well, I have reached 100 hours in the game according to Steam.  My play time showing in my ongoing save is 80 hours, so leaving out an hour or so for character creation, I've basically spent 20% of my time replaying sections of the game after party wipes and bad decisions, which feels right .

Currently, polishing off the last few stray quests in Act II after reaching the point in the main quest line that warns you that you are at the point of no return.

53 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Proficiency is a stat that rises with your level, a baseline bonus that makes you stronger at things you are good at over time. If you're proficient in a skill you add your proficiency to the roll total on the D20 when you make a check (rogues and bards also get to select expertise in some skills which allows them to add double their proficiency). A character is either proficient with a weapon in which case they add their proficiency bonus when making attack rolls with it or they are not and can't - you don't gain proficiency with stuff through use, only through stuff like class selection, backgrounds, race, etc. Possibly (likely?) there're some events and similar that can give proficiency with stuff too in game.

 

You can also gain weapon proficiency every 4 levels when you are given the option to select a feat, some of the feat options will give proficiency in different weapons or skills.  Another option is to multiclass, you can take a level in a melee class (fighter/barbarian/ranger/paladin) to become proficient in the use of martial weapons.