Massdriver

I think I'm going to lower the difficulty to normal so that I can move quicker through the game. I don't have enough time to play. I know too many people passing me up story wise and want to experience it in sync with them.

I keep things to monthly or every other week, sometimes even less than that and when I do it's in moderation.

Grade school history is propaganda in the US.

Fuck the Saudis. I know we are trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, but fuck it. Fuck them. Stop providing ANY assistance at all to them.

I prefer to read hardware reviews, but all this cash makes sense why so many reviews are done on YouTube now. I generally preferred GN or Hardware Unboxed when I do watch a video. GN was harsh but he seems authentic. This has to be hurting future sales prospects. This reminds me of the forum resetera broke off from.

I used to despise rulesets like d&d in games, but I was wrong. It’s satisfying to learn the rules and do well in these crpgs. It may be an acquired taste, but it separates a game like this from a generic rpg which we have all played a million times. Apparently a lot of people want to play AAA games that are d&d! That’s good news for gamers because they’ll have more choices. There is the middle ground which I also appreciate. DA:O occupies it well and I wish BioWare would lean back into the first one. I could also go for another Kotor.

I like that they have Heroes. This and Stormgate are both looking like they will occupy some of my future time! The emphasis on coop from both games but also with traditional competitive ranked play is exciting. I wish RTS had the popularity of MOBAs.

Careful

I'm feeling a bit of hype! This should be on Hulu like the others.

I would agree that most people don't complain that public schools exist, but plenty people complain about paying school property taxes every year.

Here is something that may be helpful to married couples. The SAVE Plan excludes spousal income for borrowers who are married and file separately. This could make a big difference in certain scenarios. For instance, if a spouse that has the loans makes a lot less money than a spouse without loans, this could allow the spouse with loans to qualify for a lot cheaper monthly payments. Moreover, if that same spouse qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness by working for government or non profit, they could end up paying minimal monthly payments and run the clock out over the next 10 years and get the rest forgiven. In best case scenarios, one could end up paying almost nothing if their income is low enough. In some more moderate scenarios, one might only service the interest on the loan and not even have to pay a dime on the principal. One other niche scenario. If you're married filing separately in a community income state like Texas or California which requires couples to split their income 50-50 on their tax returns and one spouse with a lot of loans has a far lower income than the other, one can check with their loan provider to see if they'll accept a W2, pay stubs, or other forms of certification from their employer and still qualify for the ultra low payments. This could end up saving people 10s of thousands of dollars. You just have to be careful because filing separately will result in fewer deductions, tax credits, and low thresholds for higher incomes, so you need to calculate if it's worth it. In many scenarios it overpays for itself 10x over. In other scenarios, having the income splits 50-50 could be beneficial to a higher income earner with loans. So make sure you check into all the possibilities!

That battle took me around an hour. Cheers!

19 hours in, still in act 1 and loving it. There’s a lot of little things that can be rewarding, like getting info from talking to the dead or finding trap doors that lead to a basement full of alchemy supplies! I just wish I had more time to play.

Find an unknown charismatic candidate to run as a dem that has an independent appeal like Beto did his first run and Texas may get a win every 10 years or so for one office. Otherwise I expect Texas to remain a solidly red state for decades.

Evidently there is a shortage of strong singers in the cast. La’an and Uhura were both the stand outs to me. I still enjoyed it, but even with that much digital help, most of the cast were not much better than a community theater actor singing live. Good enough, but just barely so.

It pulled it off, barely. Even my cheese meter went a bit overload there, but I still really enjoyed it and don’t think it’s out of line with Star Trek. There were episodes of cheesy silliness in every series I’ve seen (Enterprise being the only one I have not). Similar to @elbobo, I probably would not have enjoyed it prior to meeting my wife. She got me to appreciate live theater.

@legend I don’t want to try to claim I’m some type of badass either. I have to retry battles a lot to figure it out. I may well just surrender and lower it to the middle difficultly. I will post here if I do!

I feel like I can handle it, but we will see. So far I’m enjoying myself and advancing. I beat the first two acts of WotR on Core which makes me think I can handle this, but this is a different game. If I start disliking it, I will lower it.

I'm going to end up taking a long ass time to beat this game. Still very early in after 12 hours and playing on the hardest difficulty which makes me restart some battles. This is kind of how I go through these, but I'm tempted to lower the difficulty to speed things along since it's so popular.

Did you play Kingmaker and WotR? If you haven’t, I recommend them both. I’m a fan of Pillars too.

It definitely channels DA:O in how dialogue works with a custom character and how it transitions to cut scenes. It’s like playing DA:O in isometric view more of the time, with D&D rules on top with turn based combat. It’s more accessible than something like Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, but more complex than DA. Overall I’m loving it.

The way a sorcerer acquires and uses spells may be easier to grasp as a newcomer.

I wouldn't mind a full expansion to start with!

Wow! Larian must be thrilled. It was a huge risk dumping this much money into a D&D crpg and here we are.

If you want to wear heavier armor, you should lean into divine casters. A cleric will lean more into spells while the paladin will lean more into martial. If you don't care about armor, you have even more options like legend mentioned. I'm also assuming this knowledge from older AD&D rulesets and Pathfinder rules, so I could be wrong.