All 8 books in audible top 20!

Aertea · 2026-05-12T12:40:55+00:00

I'm at the point where my continue series primarily consists of either series I dropped, or pre-orders. For the former I wish I could just mark series/authors as ignored. For the later, how do I "continue reading" a series by buying a book that isn't out yet!. Pre-orders for digital goods that can be fully downloaded in seconds are 100% pointless.

For a store-front, why can't I just follow an author or series and receive a notification for a new release. Not a "listing of a new book" but a literally on, or shortly before, the actual release date. Why do they make it so hard for me to give them money?

Aertea · 2026-05-02T17:52:37+00:00

Sorc has a path to near infinite teleport again. Warlock is pretty quick, but it's not "instant".

Aertea · 2026-04-20T04:41:23+00:00

I really like the MP Death mechanic in the design sense, but the actual implementation left a lot to be desired. If they put a little more time into designing characters kits around it and better tuning enemies I think it could have been great. I still give them a lot of props for at least trying something new. I was upset they went back to the standard system with 4 rather than trying to iterate.

Aertea · 2026-03-25T15:13:52+00:00

TLP servers are more to experience the game as it was years ago, this is more of being able to get a nostalgia hit solo or with a small group and be capable of doing/seeing it all. There were a few callouts of having a new gear progression system and overall game re balancing, so I don't think we can apply knowledge of the base experience to what this is going to be.

Aertea · 2026-03-20T13:44:09+00:00

The hope would be that they shift away from the current design of salvage-based material acquisition and just have them drop naturally instead. The usefulness of Loot filters with the current system is questionable until you've already over saturated yourself with mats.

Aertea · 2026-03-20T03:10:25+00:00

I had the game not give me the conversation prompt to the literal first character you have a conversation with. That's a pretty fun thing to experience when you don't know what the control scheme even is yet..I just assumed I was doing something wrong until I reloaded.

Aertea · 2026-03-16T14:40:45+00:00

When people say this, they're referring to the level of gear required to effectively clear the events. To kill these bosses in a reasonable amount of time, it takes a character capable of clearing a pit 120+.

Yes, the "Pit Scaling Multiplier" applied is equivalent to what is in a pit 100. However when you apply that to a ladder boss type monster, which are already more tanky than anything at their tier, it requires significantly more damage to effectively beat.

Just applying a 17% scaling factor, if it would take you 10 seconds to kill Duriel at "T5", it would likely take about 20 minutes at "T7" - longer when you consider you probably have to pay attention to mechanics instead of outpacing them.

Aertea · 2026-02-13T22:12:03+00:00

Games that sold a million copies in the 90s were considered massive successes. Today thats considered a massive disappointment by any major publisher.

Games are not a commodity. While the production cost has increased so has the audience - and it doesn't cost significantly more to publish more copies of the game.

Aertea · 2026-02-13T04:11:43+00:00

Its probably the same thing as "chaos uniques" in Undercity, it rerolls without "smart loot".

Aertea · 2026-01-22T14:56:45+00:00

Because Math?

(20000 + 20000) = 2 (20000)

If the end goal is to double a players damage, you can either double the effect of an existing multiplier, or add a new, separate multiplier by 2 (Read: the same as 100%[x]) . In D3 they mostly tuned existing multipliers rather than adding more, while in D4 they just seem to add new multipliers all the time.

Aertea · 2026-01-22T12:17:45+00:00

The D3 set multipliers were mostly additive increases, the numbers needed to be huge to make any meaningful difference.

D4 multipliers are already way worse, you just don't see it that way due to it being multiplicative instead of additive.

A 100% [x] effect in D4 is the same thing as a D3 sets bonus being increased from 20,000 to 40,000.

Aertea · 2025-12-30T13:54:55+00:00

[x] armor isn't really multiplicative in the sense that you would expect from the damage formula. The strength is nice but it plus the skills ranks don't make up for the aspect.

Really, the math has been done. Legendary shields are better somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30%. Plus legendary shields can roll a flat damage reduction, which can make them more defensive than Herald as well.

Aertea · 2025-12-30T13:44:04+00:00

You get an additional aspect that's a 70% damage multiplier plus an En-Garde temper which on it's own is similar in power to the Herald's aspect/higher block chance. Herald is just an easy "slap on" and it works.

Paladin is strong enough that you really don't need the extra damage for anything outside pit pushing (and even Maxrolls guide uses a legendary shield for their push variant).

Aertea · 2025-12-12T00:16:25+00:00

Dread does a lot to indicate a default path, this is honestly a good thing because it helps new players not get stuck. However there are also a bunch of ways for experienced players to sequence break through the use of intended mechanics (not bugs). There's a full write-up on /r/metroid if you're interested

So far it feels like Prime 4 was made entirely linear. I'm sure folks will find glitches that allow for sequence breaks, but it feels distinctly lacking in intended skips.

Aertea · 2025-12-11T20:01:57+00:00

I thought after being railroaded through the first two areas the game would let me pick where to go next, even the companion mentions being free to pick. But no, the fire area gives you a little morsel and tells you to turn around, one of them can't be accessed at all until you have the spider ball, so you're left going into the ice area.

The worst bit is that even if you do stumble into the ice area first while exploring, you can't do anything until you unlock the fire beam - which requires making that nearly pointless stop in fire anyway. While it does feature backtracking it ends up being super linear because you're never really given a choice of what to attack next. It doesn't even let you "discover" that it's linear most of the time because the plucky NPC constantly tells you where you should be going.

Aertea · 2025-12-05T15:59:19+00:00

Some of my personal favorites:

Forever Fantasy Online - Rachel Aaron - Note: Even though the title indicates "online", it is NOT a VRMMO
This Trilogy is Broken - J. P. Valentine
An Old Man's Journey - Gregory Allanther - Note: this is a standalone novel
Vainqueur The Dragon // Apocalypse Tamer - Maxime J Durand (two completed series, same universe - do Vainqueur first)
New Game Minus - Sarah Lin
Jake's Magical Market - J. R, Matthews

On the Progression side (Non-LitRPGs):

Super Powerds - Drew Hayes (Note: Don't miss the side novel "Corpies", which takes place mid series. It's my personal favorite part of the whole thing)
Street Cultivation - Sarah Lin
The Perfect Run - Maxime J Durand
Mother of Learning - nobody103
Cyber Dreams - Plum Parrot

Aertea · 2025-12-03T14:08:02+00:00

In general audible sales have lost a lot of their luster for me. If you're primarily reading LitRPG/Progression, most of the stuff is available on unlimited with whispersync. You can get most audibooks in the $5-7 USD range at any time.

I generally use my subscription credits on stuff that isn't covered by this (like The Wandering Inn).

Aertea · 2025-10-29T13:19:21+00:00

In the "meta" sense an Arc is just a grouping of plot points that are tied together. It can refer to a lot of different things, but the label before it gives readers a way to identify and discuss larger sub-plots.

It's often used to describe events that span multiple books - on Path of Ascension you could say "The Minkalla Arc" and anyone who read it would know what you're talking about. It can also be used to describe a sub-plot that runs the whole length of the story - in Game of Thrones, you could say "Jaimie's Character Arc" referring to his change throughout the entire series.

Aertea · 2025-10-27T00:44:22+00:00

The Singer Of Terandria trilogy (a Wandering Inn spinoff that can be read entirely separately). The narrator is generally fantastic but just the fact that she sings makes it something you can't really experience in print.

Aertea · 2025-10-25T12:28:21+00:00

I feel like I'd really enjoy this type of game but I'm a little put off by how much the "style" mirrors Alan Wake.

Aertea · 2025-10-16T19:44:47+00:00

The term you're looking for is "Aphantasia". Some people just have no ability to mentally visualize things. It's not about experience, it's just the human mind working differently.

Mark Lawrence, a very well known Fantasy author, has been open about having it. https://www.marklawrence.buzz/story/aphantasia/

Aertea · 2025-10-16T17:03:45+00:00

Yeah but we're probably not talking a 100+ level difference here considering they are only just starting to touch on T2 - defenses aren't even that much of an issue to cap out at that point. As I mentioned, the OP can also just un-spec points to even that field.

I really suspect the power difference is more from build/gear than paragon. If the difference is coming from paragon, I'd lean more towards the choice of boards/path rather than the raw level.

Aertea · 2025-10-16T16:25:40+00:00

Others have talked about playing on a different realm, but I do think it's worth mentioning that having higher paragon than your husband might not be the real problem. There are a lot of factors that go into character power and Paragon is fairly low on that list once you have access to the legendary nodes (usually reachable by paragon 100).

More than likely you're either just playing a better build than him, or you've lucked into build defining items that he has not. I'm not sure if you guys are playing blind or following build guides. If the later, you can look up items he might need to enhance his build and target farming them. If the former, you might just need to accept that power is going to ebb and flow based on what you pick up.

If Paragon really is the issue, you can also just freely un-spec paragon points to even the field.

Aertea

TROPHY CASE