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Post by bbg95 on Jul 1, 2021 9:45:54 GMT -5
You have made me want to play Mass Effect, but it's $60. Yes, I know that gets me all three games and all the DLC, but it's still $60. (Actually, it's only $50 right now on Steam on sale.) If I didn't have a bunch of other paid-for-but-unplayed games right now, I would probably buy it. Haha, well, even though I've played the games before on my PC, I paid $54 at launch for the Legendary Edition (I got a 10% pre-order discount when I had a trial subscription for EA Play), and I haven't regretted my purchase for a second. Granted, it's your money, but it's easily worth $50. It's probably worth triple that, at least for someone who has never played the games before. I doubt it will be much cheaper than $50 anytime soon. I just checked isthereanydeal, and the current price on Steam is the lowest it has been on any of the various platforms that they track.
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Post by mln59 on Jul 2, 2021 13:02:48 GMT -5
gamefly has received dark souls remastered. that's good. always get worried that the post office will lost one of these games in transit
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Post by mikegarrison on Jul 2, 2021 14:02:21 GMT -5
I finished Siege Of Dragonspear and overall it was kind of annoying. I didn't fully realize this, but as a DLC that was tacked on to Baldur's Gate 1 but that came many years after Baldur's Gate 2, they kind of have to shoehorn you into the position you are in for BG2. So there is sort of an aftermath that follows the final boss battle, where you get accused of a murder you didn't commit. Then you escape prison and are captured for a hostile force. The end.
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Post by Kingsley on Jul 2, 2021 15:12:08 GMT -5
Y’all gotta get excited about Microsoft Flight Simulator dropping for Series X at the end of the month.
Can’t imagine all the stupid s*** we’ll do, like landing hot air balloons at La Guardia.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jul 7, 2021 1:04:16 GMT -5
I started playing Baldur's Gate 2, but I realized I was really starting to regret my character, Harold. (He was named after a college friend.) He was kind of boring. I picked a fighter because I knew it would be the easiest type to play. Very tanky, high melee DPS, just run into the crowd and start swinging your sword. But I found myself wanting to do something else.
I could have started a fresh character for BG2, but instead I decided to start BG1 over again. This time I made a my character a woman sorcerer. She's very different -- not tanky at all, can't wear armor, and at the start of the game was very tricky to play. But as magic users level up they get more powerful and fun than fighters. They still never get tanky, though, so I've been trying to get people in my party to draw the aggro while I use my death magics from afar.
I also moved to a higher level of difficulty -- "core rules". These rules were more like AD&D 2e rules. Before, when I was playing "normal", I always got the maximum increase in hit points every level up. Under core rules I get a randomized number of HP (1-4 for a mage, 1-6 for a thief, etc.). So none of my characters are as tough this time through. And the enemies got tougher.
I also am running a substantially different party than the first time. That time I had Harold and Khalid as fighters, Jaheira as a druid/fighter, Neera as a "wild mage", my half-sister Imoen as a thief (although we don't know we are half-siblings), and a monk. This time I have two magic users (my character is a sorcerer and I also have another kind of mage), a fighter, and Jaheira and Imoen again. I don't have Khalid because he was killed. (He is Jaheira's husband, and you have to have them both or neither unless one dies.) For my sixth character I had trouble because I really wanted someone who could tank for me, but the best I could do was a cleric. Clerics can wear armor but they don't have as many HP as fighters. It was nice having two healers in the party, though. But I swapped her out for a paladin, who is now my most tanky character.
My fights go very differently from before -- instead of just lots of melee supported by ranged attacks, now I mostly kill enemies using ranged magic and the melee fighters are just there to keep them distracted.
My character has this awesome dragon firebreath, but I can't use it all that often because in D&D AOE attacks will very definitely cause friendly damage. Mostly I just use the old standby spell "magic missile", which levels up as your mage levels up.
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Post by bbg95 on Jul 7, 2021 1:19:23 GMT -5
I have completed all but four loyalty missions in Mass Effect 2 (there are 12 total). I did find some more hidden dialogue that I was unaware of when I was looking up something else on YouTube. There is one species called the Quarians that have been nomadic ever since they were driven from their home world by a race of sentient machines known as the Geth that the Quarians created and then unsuccessfully tried to destroy when they became self-aware. In Mass Effect 2, you actually recruit a Geth party member, but it's in one of the very last missions prior to the suicide mission. I had never thought to do the Quarian squad member's loyalty mission after recruiting the Geth party member, but it is possible, albeit with the need to pass some speech checks to convince the Quarians to allow it onboard. The conversation options at this point were rather interesting, as the Quarians are somewhat divided about how to approach the Geth.
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Post by mln59 on Jul 10, 2021 9:42:23 GMT -5
finally was able to pick up chronos: before the ashes from the post office
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Post by mln59 on Jul 11, 2021 19:07:03 GMT -5
finally was able to pick up chronos: before the ashes from the post office played a bit this morning. i need to learn how to parry or this game will be tough
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Post by bbg95 on Jul 11, 2021 20:36:09 GMT -5
I finally got Civilization VI, as the Platinum Edition (bundled for about $80 on Steam, though it's less during certain sales) was in last month's Humble Bundle, and I figured $12 was too good a price to pass up. Granted, I'm not sure when I'll get the time to actually play it.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jul 12, 2021 0:46:18 GMT -5
Spent the weekend playing Stellaris, but I decided to play a little Gloomhaven before I went to bed. They have released the last character, but to unlock him you need to have your characters die at least 10 times. (He's a healer, so the theme there is that if you die a lot, you need a healer.)
I played a mission I had tried a couple times before, and always with complete failure. So I figured that at least I would die a few times, right?
The mission starts with one night demon (fast, likes to go first and then turn invisible), one fire demon (heavily shielded and retaliates, you you need to try for massive one-hit kills or your attacks will do more damage to you than to the demon) and one earth demon (tank). But that's just a warm-up, because when you open the door to the next room there are about four earth demons, a couple of night demons, and a couple of fire demons. AND there are three "skull altars" that will each summon another demon every turn until you kill them. The last time I tried this I had a whole room full of demons in just a few turns, and it was a slaughter.
But this time all three altars were close together. I get my invisible assassin in among them, and he managed to kill them all in about six turns. Could have been even quicker, but he has an instant-kill attack that was just too good to pass up on some 18-hp earth demons. Meanwhile I got my paladin right in the middle of all the demons and she drew almost all the aggro. But she was shielded up, and mostly they wasted their attacks. My bard laid down some huge AOE stuns to make sure the paladin didn't take too much damage. My last character was the star of the mission -- it was his story mission and he had to survive it. He is a magic user with lots of low-damage spells that can be augmented to do a few more points of damage. And since most of them are AOE spells, 2-3 points of damage each for 5-6 enemies can add up to a lot of points in total. He nearly did the most total damage of any character, although he got very few kills. But he softened up a lot of demons.
Anyway, on a mission I picked because I assumed I would get a total party wipe and rack up four deaths, I won the mission without any party deaths at all.
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Post by mln59 on Jul 14, 2021 9:41:18 GMT -5
been making progress on chronos: before the ashes
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Post by mikegarrison on Jul 14, 2021 13:52:06 GMT -5
So, Stellaris: I was in this federation that was getting annoying, because the AIs always wanted to keep getting into pointless wars. As with most strategy games, the AI is not terribly good. In particular, the AI will never choose to end a war early.
Here's how wars work.
There is a main attacker and a main defender. Only these two empires can negotiate to end a war. Also, they get to decide the "war goal", which can be to just humiliate the opponent, conquer some territory, force the opponent to change governments, or outright totally erase the opponent. (That's not the full list of goals.)
As you take over starbases of systems with no colonies, you just gain control of the system. But if there is a colony, to gain full control you need to send in an army and conquer it on the ground.
Most wars end with a "white peace", where the war just ends as-is. Neither side officially wins. As time goes by (and especially if you lose ships in the fighting) you get "war exhaustion", and this makes it more likely for the AI to accept an end to the war. After reaching 100% war exhaustion for six game months, you can be forced to accept an end to the war.
The AI always fights until reaching 100% war exhaustion, even when it would be much better to end the war sooner (such as because you are also in another war!). Which means that instead of locking in their gains, the stupid AI will just keep a war going and let the enemy try to take back some of their losses while you are busy doing something else. (The AI really needs a multiplier for war exhaustion for being in multiple wars at once.)
When the war ends, whether you get control of occupied systems depends on what kind of war it was (war goals) and also whether you have any active claims on those systems. For many war goals, if you don't have claims on a system you have to give it back, even if it is fully occupied. And if you are playing as a pacifist empire then you can only make claims in defensive wars, so you can't just decide you really want this other system, claim it, and go to war over it.
However, certain war goals are "end threat", which means that unlike normal wars, as soon as you gain (or lose) a system, it instantly switches ownership. No claims necessary.
So I left this stupid federation where nobody was working together and I was by far the most powerful empire anyway. Of course my fellow members all hated me for leaving them, but by that point I didn't care. I needed to be in full control of my own wars, and this federation was so dysfunctional that they didn't even have the main advantage of any federation -- a federation fleet. Federations can build a much stronger fleet of warships than a usual solo empire, but they need to be cohesive enough to support it. This federation was made up of too many empires with conflicting government types, so it wasn't cohesive.
Then I laughed and laughed when the "War In Heaven" started and the two awakened ancient empires basically just rolled right over my former federation. Eventually I declared war on one of the awakened empires and conquered a bunch of territory that used to belong to my former federation buddies. Then I made peace. Then I got into a war with the other awakened empire and did the same thing.
I now have ownership of almost all the territory formerly held by my federation allies, and one of the awakened empires essentially controls everything else. Technically this other empire has a higher score than my and would "win the game", but I'm certain I could defeat it (due to the AI being stupid). I'm not sure if I will grind out the game to a final conclusion or if I've satisfied my Stellaris urges for now.
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Post by mln59 on Jul 16, 2021 7:18:08 GMT -5
think i experienced a significant glitch last night in chronos: before the ashes. had to restart the entire game.
going to try again tonight after work to see if i can find a solution
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Post by mln59 on Jul 16, 2021 19:01:06 GMT -5
i think i may have worked around the glitch
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Post by mln59 on Jul 16, 2021 20:44:42 GMT -5
chronos: before the ashes is not helping me figure out where i should go next. without a walkthrough, i would have been hella stuck. going to quit for the evening
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