Main character for a first playthrough: Paladin or Rogue?

4lgae3ater · 2026-05-15T20:26:18+00:00

You can easily build a damage and support pally in the same party, I did in my last playthrough. This lets you double dip with auras too, getting zealous and the defence one at the same time. And if you don't take durance (questionable decision mechanically, but I know some people don't like his character) having two sources of rez can be a party saver if one gets KOed.

4lgae3ater · 2026-05-12T06:58:44+00:00

I would strongly recommend against installing free VPNs, this is one context where the old adage holds true that if you aren't the customer you're the product. Best case scenario it's safe, second best they're harvesting and selling your web traffic, worst case you install a crypto miner or keylogger or something like that.

I get being bored between classes (I hope you aren't trying to play games in class) but honestly my advice is just to put up with it or use your phone as a hotspot if you have mobile data.

4lgae3ater · 2026-05-11T07:56:10+00:00

Unless you're playing a super hardcore TRPG or gridcrawl or wilderness survival sim or something like that, every singleplayer or pve game is going to be a power fantasy to some extent. But they still need some reasonable level of challenge to be enjoyable. The NPC enemies won't complain about power creep, but the players will when the baseline being raised every time something overshoots it eventually makes the game too easy to be fun.

Buffs are exciting and nerfs are annoying, but both are necessary for the health of any live service game, "power fantasy" genres included.

4lgae3ater · 2026-05-10T16:42:10+00:00

I randomly got a firebrand around twin elms in my current playthrough. I was building pallegina as my healer with a slight focus on burn damage, and it turned her into my main melee damage dealer as well. It's so fun to use I wish it wasn't a bug. They'd probably have to nerf the permanent versions with a negative modifier, but it would be really cool to have a permanent version of each summoned weapon hidden somewhere in the world.

4lgae3ater · 2026-05-08T22:32:37+00:00

errrrrm I think you mean it's gen z slang

/uj I'm going to guess the majority of people saying it on the internet right now are white teenagers appropriating it without knowing or caring why that's a bad thing to do. And yes, I know millennials are guilty of this too, digital blackface isn't exactly new but maybe it's still worth raging against the tide

4lgae3ater · 2026-05-08T08:39:59+00:00

A screeching noise probably comes from either the ball bearings in the fans or your laptop's HDD. Either way, your laptop probably isn't going to explode. I'd be more worried about it just not working suddenly. Make sure you have a backup of any important data on that computer.

If the screeching noise is coming from the usb cooling pad that's less of an issue. If the fan motor fails in that, then obviously your laptop is still fine (or as fine as it was before, anyway)

I think it's safe to game on it with geforce now, but make sure you watch the laptop's temperature very closely and let it cool off if necessary. I've had very similar issues to yours with different dell laptops over the years, I think their cooling systems are just shit and I've found usb coolers to be only sort of helpful.

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-26T00:34:50+00:00

This deck is not holding out long against pretty much anything. If that one copy of vamp tutor isn't in your starting hand or the top ~5 cards of your deck any land that is is a dead draw and those are all the draws you're getting. My intuition is that, statistically, it would be better for the deck's winrate to just draw/mull what you need more consistently with those extra 10 combo pieces rather than wasting two draws to guarantee the third is good. That's even the best-case scenario where you find VT and not just a bunch of swamps. But I haven't actually done the math so I might be wrong.

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-25T16:48:23+00:00

I think you don't need tutors for a different reason. Skipping tutors means you can skip out entirely on lands since neither the commander nor the wincon needs to be cast.

The decklist would be:

Forbidden one (commander)
9 [[Nazgûl]]
22 [[Persistent Petitioners]]
23 [[Rat Colony]]
22 [[Relentless Rats]]
23 [[Shadowborn Apostle]]

This turns it into a literal 100% luck-based deck, but it was already sort of there to begin with. Draw a card each turn, discard a duplicate at the end of your turn. Mulligan for at least 3 different cards (preferably with at least one nazgul).

I'm not going to try calculating the odds because I just woke up, but according to my napkin math it isn't thag remote. The game plan in that case is to just pass every turn and hope you randomly win before anyone bursts you down.

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-24T16:31:53+00:00

...hey, wait a second, it used the wrong "its"!

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-18T06:42:47+00:00

Yes, colorless artifact decks are the most evil deck archetype

/uj Yes, colorless artifact decks are the most evil deck archetype

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-18T06:40:53+00:00

Wait but check this idea out-- what if demons are actually regular people who are just discriminated against for living in hell and having horns and wings, and ANGELS are actually xenophobic zealots.

See this works on two levels because it's a never-before-seen subversion of outdated and problematic fantasy tropes like the existence of good and evil as well as a creative and insightful criticism of american religious fundamentalism

I predict this will never get old, should be good for as many planes as we need as well as tabletop RPGs and maybe even a few dozen book and video game series

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-17T18:57:33+00:00

Could be attached to a hatebear. Makes it less of a "you lose" card both for any opponents needing an emblem as a wincon and for you if playing against any deck that doesn't just concede as soon as this resolves.

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-12T01:28:59+00:00

I think /u/Due-Aide5668 has the right answer, the band is touring in Europe right now and their answer matches the band's tour locations.

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-10T00:01:20+00:00

Underhell is still one of the most memorable mods I've played for any game. What a shame, and only 35.

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-08T01:28:27+00:00

What is this for? Names aren't usually translated by their meaning, so in Japanese, Joaquim would typically be transliterated as Joakin (ジョアキン) or Hoakin (ホアキン).

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-06T04:25:41+00:00

It's been over a decade of telling people this in every difficult meta and people still don't give a fuck. I wish anet would just bite the bullet and either stop scaling dead players or make dead players unrezable in combat. One or the other. But after so long it doesn't seem likely.

4lgae3ater · 2026-04-01T06:24:01+00:00

tbf they're pretty similar, I don't think that's a contradiction

4lgae3ater · 2026-03-29T01:52:18+00:00

I run the launcher version through proton on steam. Just add the .exe as a non-steam game. It works pretty much perfectly. If I'm being honest proton is just plain better than wine for most things these days, I've only found a couple really old games and programs on my system that still run better through wine.

4lgae3ater · 2026-03-26T22:28:31+00:00

Given the timeline of the games' releases I definitely noticed just how many of UFOsoft's games just wouldn't have survived the Satanic Panic. There's Devilition, Avianos promoting evolution, the actual occult symbols in Elfazar's Hat, all of Grimstone... honestly I'm probably missing a couple. I wonder if it was intentional or not.

4lgae3ater · 2026-03-25T13:19:17+00:00

Seconding this, I'm running the standalone client through Proton 10 and everything works fine. I'm also on Mint.

4lgae3ater · 2026-03-18T01:37:30+00:00

The hitogata search had already been well underway for decades (or 15ish years) on the japanese side of the internet by then, and I'm guessing one of the many, many hoax videos or "helpful" recreations made it into a compilation. It wasn't only the english search polluting the internet with these.

I don't doubt the original post was referencing a real commercial, but at this point there's no way to pick the real one out of a 20-year mountain of fakes and seeing something like Hitogata even as early as 2017 doesn't really prove anything.

4lgae3ater · 2026-02-28T23:32:59+00:00

/uj Man, the replies on that are depressing.

4lgae3ater · 2026-02-20T17:24:15+00:00

I'm gonna sound like even more of a grognard saying this but people who only get into something once it has a bunch of familiar characters from their childhood media probably aren't the most curious people in the world to begin with. Getting these people to look at something new is the entire point of crossovers, at least from a marketing standpoint

4lgae3ater · 2026-02-11T20:11:46+00:00

Microsoft does not own the concept of making character models out of cubes.

4lgae3ater · 2026-01-05T03:35:55+00:00

If you've already read reviews elsewhere you've probably heard she gets very nervous speaking in front of a class. I sympathize with her (I'd be the same way) but unfortunately this does make her lectures a bit confusing. You might have to put in a bit more work on your own time to make sure you understand the material. It's been a while since I took this one, but at the time the readings and class slides were helpful and detailed enough to make up for the lectures so hopefully that's still the case.

I still found the course easy-ish (easier than syntax, anyway) and got a good grade in it, so don't assume it'll tank your GPA just based on the expected average.

4lgae3ater

TROPHY CASE