Rexxitor. Biology nerd. Roguelites, indie games, and TRPGs. Drowning in unused yarn, unread books, and mandatory cat hair.

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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Ok. Mini-rant because I can’t contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I’ve been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

    Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I’m quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they’re the type that only hates what they make because they’re the one who made it.

    Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you’re Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don’t even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn’t what you saw in your head (it never is).

    Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what’s in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand – this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

    When you’ve got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you’re able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

    Barring that, my second choice is singing.



  • It doesn’t, but I’ve wished it did. Probably as a toggled option, since I know it would aggravate others.

    It would require a couple more Act 2 safe zones scattered about for the player to keep track of, but it makes more sense than the ability to just chill for a while in what can be some incredibly unsafe territory. Sneaking off to bang in the underdark? Sure. Fine. I’m certain that won’t cause any undue noise.

    There are only 1-2 battles I’m aware of that can or absolutely will happen, and neither are randomized encounters in the same vein. Areas it notes are dangerous, it won’t allow you to rest at all.


  • Can happen just the same with Astarion. He’s perfectly fine being in a relationship with you if you never turn him down, but
    [SPOILER paragraph because the tag won’t work]:

    whether he means a damn thing he says is completely dependent on one single camp scene. If you rest enough with a sufficiently progressed relationship, he’ll confess that he meant to use you as a shield and accidentally fell in love. If you progress to Act 3 without the confession, you get a cruel speech about how easy it was, and he doesn’t know why you’re so shocked (“It’s what I DO.”)

    …end spoiler. Someone needs to explain the hieroglyphics of that tag to me.

    It’s a pitfall of theirs, and as intrusive as it would have been to keep the exhaustion meter they originally had, removing the mechanic entirely is too destructive. It makes hoarding camp supplies laughably easy and results in too much missed content.

    Maybe a notification marker of some sort reminding the player would be enough. Maybe it wouldn’t, because “Boy am I tired” is just something my party members say sometimes and it was easy enough to ignore without any clear punishment for doing so.

    But they really need to reinstate something.




  • It can be a little stressful even for me. And yes, the inventory management is atrocious btw, it’s a common complaint.

    Like someone else mentioned, you can always pay a little to respec if you find out a character doesn’t have the stats to do what you’re wanting/what they’re built to do. That does require gold, and it is something that needs to be read up on and ultimately taken for a test ride to see if it’s even fun for you. That many options can feel really daunting.

    But I think with enough cleverness, the game can be won with almost anything. Just last night, I watched a playthrough of a guy who had challenged himself to beat the game without killing anyone or manipulating anyone else to kill them for him, and he did it.

    Whole game. The only NPC he had no way around personally harming could still be knocked out and left alive. He tricked the end boss into murdering itself through careful use of explosive barrels and he himself never fired a shot — a super cheesy fighting tactic common enough that the term “barrelmancy” is a thing.

    I’m not gonna say there won’t be reloads, but there are a multitude of ways to handle most if not all altercations. Some things can be talked out of, or allies sought to help.

    If not, it could be a huge, horrible fight taken head-on for the awful fun of it, or you could sneak up and thunderwave them into a hole and be done with it. Covertly poison the lot. Command them to drop their own weapon and then take it, and giggle while they flail their fists at you. Cast light on the guy with a sun sensitivity and laugh harder at their own personal hell.

    You could sneak around back and take the high ground, triggering the battle by firing the first shot from a vantage point the enemy will take 4 rounds to reach through strategically placed magical spikes.

    I passed one particularly worrying trial by just turning the most powerful opponent into a sheep until every other enemy was dead and I could gang up on them. Cleared another fight sitting entirely in the rafters where they had trouble hitting me, and shoved them to their death when one found a way up.

    Going straight into a battle is the most expected way to do it, but there are usually shenanigans that can be played, is what I’m saying. Accept with grace the attempts that don’t work. If the rules of engagement seem unfair, change the rules.

    If it helps any, the game does also reward xp fairly generously. Just reaching new/hidden areas grants a little bit, to say nothing of side quests.

    That guy I was talking about, the one that finished with zero kills, ended the game at level 10. The level cap is 12. That was all just wandering around, doing stuff that didn’t require fighting.

    Know which stat each class mainly uses and focus on that. Do not make the mages wear armor, it is not a happy fun experience. Beyond that, be clever and moderately lucky with your cleverness. You’ll be fine.

    It’s a lot to get used to and does take time to be familiar with all your options, but I started out not very far above where you sound like you are. You do get used to it if you take your time, and I’m certain most people would be overjoyed to help.


  • I’m not so sure. I’ve not played the first two to be able to measure between them, but I do recall thinking that if I hadn’t been so into watching videos of other peoples’ dnd campaigns, I would be so helplessly far out of my depth.

    As it was, I was already struggling a little bit with which class was best for my likely playstyle. Who can use what armor, why, and what happens when they don’t. What skills go with what stats. The general info they don’t have a need to go over when you’re not the one at the table.

    Those aren’t things OP would know enough about to even know they don’t know, so I’m glad they have someone helping them. I don’t consider myself anything remotely resembling intelligent and they’re starting out with less. For being easily one of the best things I’ve played in years, it would feel impossibly daunting for a noob


  • The post can, yeah. The predictability with which all posts or comments containing the word “Google” will have several responses underneath evangelizing Firefox almost certainly will not, after it exceeds a point it very clearly routinely exceeds.

    Not because you guys are wrong, (you’re not), but because you’re annoying, which is almost as bad. There is something in psychology called reactance theory, and it’s the reason why, when you’re just about to do the dishes and then someone else tells you to do them, it’s suddenly the last thing on earth you want to do.

    It is a choice so small it isn’t worth arguing over, but it’s no longer your choice born out of your own free will, and now you feel cheated and resentful and you are not doing it, both out of spite and more truthfully to regain your sense of choice.

    This is the same reason everyone hates vegans so much. They’re not wrong. They’re annoying. Firefox has vegan PR.

    I held off listening to Hamilton for three years for no other reason than nobody else I met would shut the goddamn fuck up about Hamilton. Same with the TV version of Good Omens, whatever stupid cartoon jester thing has been in a third of the memes lately, and a hundred other things.

    I am very likely to switch over to Firefox myself in the ever-nearing future. That ice is breaking. But it will not be because a bunch of strangers whined at me over my own choices for over a decade. It will be because the cons of whatever Google, Windows, etc. have done finally outweigh the pros of not having to exert effort to maintain my experience.

    It bears consideration that in the meantime, Firefox users have a tendency not to even read the several duplicate comments before they start jacking off into them, not uncommonly in a way that’s loudly judgemental towards their own target audience.

    The resultant spam cements a mental association between Firefox, the brand and the feeling of being annoyed and insulted. Don’t be those vegans. If I had to think, be like the art community treats Adobe. Fuck Adobe, but I’m not just gonna overload someone with aggressive pompousity who’s only using the industry default.





  • When I get deeply emotionally attached to my data analyst, I might care if they’re moonlighting on the side. Sex, work or not, is still an emotional topic for most of the human race and it’s not new knowledge to anyone.

    Enough that it would not naturally occur to me that “please do not engage in prostitution while we’re together” needs to be said out loud. I will casually ask if you’re monogamous and if you say yes, that’s how monogamy works.

    Even aside from that, yeah, tbh, I would consider it good form to let your partner know you’re considering a new job regardless, just so they generally know what’s going on. If you have to hide it, maybe something is wrong.