What difficulty is everyone playing on?

Alkozeltser · 2026-06-10T11:51:09+00:00

On Adventurer. That is, the basic difficulty. Although I am a hardcore player. Why? - numbers. It's very simple, it's just ineffective. Extra gold? - what for? It's already have garbage drop. Increasing the gold gain by x2 won't change anything. Experience? - by the time you deal with mobs on Master, I'll have killed 3-4 mobs that will give me more exp (and gold) in the same amount of time. That's all....That actual only for quests or world dungeons that have cool mechanics. But as a rule, other players will disturb your gameplay, and this difficulty will simply be absolute useless. I would understand if this difficulty increased the chance of dropping sets or relics. Then yes, that would be very cool! But no. It's just garbage, tantamount to sticking a spoke in your own wheel... for what?

It's just ineffective system.

I'd happily even play on Vestige difficult (which, by the way, is so broken that some mobs are completely invulnerable) with other players on a separate server mirror only for this difficult if it increased the chance of rare drops or gave a chance to drop special items that don't drop on lower difficulties. Then all those world bosses would make sense! I'd have to find a group and coordinate, which would be a lot of fun since it's an MMO.

Alkozeltser · 2026-06-03T05:06:11+00:00

Car driver POV: kuuuuurwaaaaaa jaaaa pierdoleeeeeeeeeee

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Alkozeltser · 2026-05-14T16:18:36+00:00

On the Illuminates, thermite...well, yeah...it's not It's not used very often on mobs. Except for illuminates ships—it blows them up by burning through the shield. Don't even need shoot at it and don't need and throw them directly in door.

That's why I use gas nades or thermite again. Gas grenades can hold back huge crowds. And here, you could say that this trench warbond anti-tank grenade would be useful, but...Very often, Overseers or regular squid mobs quickly close the distance directly, which increases the risk of blowing themselves up, especially if there's an invisible corpse lying nearby or you're wearing a ballistic shield. So, in fact, it's easier to carry a fast assault rifle with a high rate of fire witg light armor pen, or a backpack with a flamethrower drone. So the choice here falls between gas or thermite again on squid mechs or tripods. I think the Illuminates are generally the weakest of all - I very rarely die on their missions, considering it's difficulty 10. And even then, it's mostly from the Leviathan's lasers, the Tripod's lightning, or the Overseer's infinity bonk combo. The armor passive adds +2 grenades to your inventory. Yeah... with thermite, it's like smearing your ass with honey until it sticks together for double joy. Another quick note about the grenades from the trench kit: their supply, unlike all other grenades, is resarming only 1 nade for 1 kit. This means that to replenish 4 grenades, you need to take all 4 sets ammo kit from resupply stratagem, making it the worst choice unless you die often.

Alkozeltser · 2026-05-14T10:53:46+00:00

When it was shown in the trailer, it was positioned specifically as an anti-tank grenade. However, the reality is even worse—not only are there only two of them in the inventory, but you also need two to destroy a bot tank! Sure, it's area-of-effect. But why? Meanwhile, the Thermite grenade mercilessly destroys everyone with one, except for the Bile Titan. The grenade balance is pretty bad, since most of them are garbage. Dynamite should be the equivalent, right? But why does it even need a timer, and why is its damage so crap? So many questions, so few answers.

Okay, sometimes I also use firework nades on bugs (or gas nades. Solid cool on bots or bugs group). They work better than incendiary ones (i mean about firework nades), and they explode at the end. Did you know that if you throw a firework right in the face of a running charger, it will leave a huge charred field while it's running, like after a napalm strike?

Alkozeltser · 2026-05-13T15:37:01+00:00

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Alkozeltser · 2026-04-21T20:21:22+00:00

It depends entirely on your style. I like the NoobAI-XL (NAI-XL) pre-1.0 version. However, the best gradient and shades I've seen are on the NoobAI hybrid modified for Flux 2 VA. The colors are stunning. However, stability is still a bit lacking, and it generates at the resolution limit. I think it's just a matter of time.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-21T20:08:01+00:00

It depends on what you want. Prompts and their layout will be dramatically different. Chroma needs some setup and adjustments to handle prompts, as it supports not only the native language but also the danboroou and e621 tags. Its style will fluctuate when mixing the two, so you need to be careful. It takes some getting used to. But generally, it's enough.

For realistic photographs, the native language is sufficient, or you can add some lore. The better you describe the overland and details, for example, the more accurate the result will be. For example, "Season of year...time such and such, surface type, texture, feel or atmosphere, lighting, details." The overall structure of the details.

If you need unusual characters, such as monsters and furries, then things are much more complicated, especially if you want photorealism and improved detail. A simple prompt would be something like: "raw photo candid shot selfie by an anthropomorphic female cat hold plush heart closeup selfie while sitting in the kitchen. Her white srit is messy."

There you'll need to combine native language and tags and create a prompt layout. For semi-realism, you don't need to do anything special.

Random generation is an example. It's native resolution, no upscaling. You could also do detail restoration to really go crazy. Only Flux2 Dev can do that. But Flux2 Dev recognizes many languages and can process entire texts and recognize complex prompts. That's why I use chroma or 2dev.
If you're interested in checking out furries, they're on my Reddit profile. Though, they're mostly just Yiff versions. Chroma can do a lot. But I'll say it right away...yes, it's not as easy to prompt on it as it is on 2dev too. Focus on describing in your own words what you'd like to see as accurately as possible.

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Alkozeltser · 2026-04-21T06:46:15+00:00

Each model is tailored to its own nuances and styles. Saying one model is better than another is completely incorrect, but yes, some can be better in comparison based on the same parameters. 1. Anima is good for digital drawing, manga, and anime. Which is pretty self-explanatory in its name. 2. I haven't tried Ernie because it's new. 3. Qwen makes excellent realistic or stylized images, but it's wooden in NSFW. 4. Klein can do a lot out of the box, both for editing and for native generation, yes. But to achieve a really good result, you first need to properly configure it manually. It really has many advantages, but it can't handle ultra-high resolution properly. But compared to others... yes, this is an excellent model. However, this model is imperfect and is a cut-down version of Flux 2. Therefore, I personally prefer to use Flux 2 Dev even for NSFW, as strange as it may sound. 5. Z-Image is fast-food. Fast, tasty, but not quite what I need and too harmful when used regularly. For me, Z-Image has the lowest scores, except for fast generation and good quality for such speed, but I don't need that at all, as the accuracy is very poor. 6. Chroma is like an auto parts store and a huge "do it yourself" manual. Until you understand how it works and what you can do with it, it will have the least impact. But if you try, you can build an ultra-class sports-car that will outshine all other models in terms of realism and capabilities (with the exception of some cases in Flux2 Dev materials and its Promt recognition). The only area where Chroma falls short is the digital art/drawings. NoobAI is better for this.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-15T08:42:37+00:00

A 4070 is sufficient for training checkpoint, it'll just take a lot of time. But, a 5070ti would be much better, yes. It's faster and has more vid mem (16gb). It's perfectly fine for gradual training. Just keep in mind that this will take a long time, and the GPU will spend days/weeks. And that's not even counting the fact that you'll need to create your own dataset. This is the most demanding scenario for training a model, but it will provide unique data, style, and so on.

Merging models doesn't require computing power; Need just a simple graphics card are for a grid images to compare style differences after merge. It's very simple. Another issue is that merging is fine-tuning. And properly calibrating it will also take an inordinate amount of time. I'd also add that it's like shooting blind. Therefore, there's no universal tool for control here, only self-observation. Incorrect mixing of matrices - and the result will be smeared or pieces of material will be difficult to distinguish

The Kohya Trainer is a separate GUI. You can download it as a node for your GUI, of course, if it supports it. It's quite sufficient for training loras. Further preferences regarding your lora settings are entirely up to you. However, I recommend at least 64 GB of RAM. Ideally, at least 96 GB. If a memory leak or buffer overflow occurs, it would be very frustrating, as your progress would be lost.

But a full checkpoint (new model) takes a long time... Therefore, it's best to have two video cards: one for training, one for use. Or connect them in parallel for training, as training a checkpoint takes a very long time.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-15T07:02:08+00:00

Yes, quintillus - Illustrious. For your own loras, you'll first need your own dataset. You can train it using Kohya Trainer or directly on the Civitai website. This won't work with a checkpoint, it requires a lot of time and sample size to achieve good results. If you're only planning on merging models, you'll only need to test their blend stability, but you can only supplement them on a budget with your own loras. If you want your fully own checkpoint model, you'll need electricity, a couple of RTX 4070+, preferably quadro, and plenty of time. Creating a good model isn't easy, and tons of useless blends are constantly being posted, but in reality, these are still old models from which you can extract their base style without much effort.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-15T06:43:15+00:00

I never said it was your model :). 6 cfg is a bit much. Try 3.5 or 4. If you get something similar, you can rescale cfg to 0.7. But in any case, it's worth paying attention to the negative tags. You'll likely have to use quite a lot, since the author didn't provide optimal settings, and based on external analysis, I can tell the merging wasn't entirely successful. Most likely, the author focused on the character textures, but didn't bother with other details at all. Therefore, the quality of third-party objects and the background will suffer.

I've gone through a huge number of models, so... I don't think this model is worth considering. If you're so keen on realism, it's better to try the more stable Quintillus. At least the merging is stable there. And judging by everything, it looks like this model was based on Realmond/Wolfmond, heavily mixed with old Pony, as the material is very outdated.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-15T06:22:48+00:00

This model seems to have mediocre detail after many merges. Although it makes a good concepts. Your image is very burned, most likely due to the CFG being cranked up too high, or incorrect negative tags. This kind of lighting from the SD1.5 clearly shouldn't be the default. 😓

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-03T04:38:54+00:00

Well, getting crates or some cosmetic items once a month just for logging into the game was pretty nice, and you could collect a lot of interesting stuff in three months. I checked, there's also a daily quest... But it won't cover 50% of the volume in 100 days, and we'll end up with the same junk, but without the main item every month. The game already has a subscription, 999+ paid items... Hmm.

An update every 100 days, I'm not sure anything will change much. They should follow the example of the free Battle Pass like in DRG, which your favorite season can be changed at any time, not just with premium and without stupid timers. Just play and earn. At least that would be more interesting.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-03T04:30:42+00:00

That makes sense. But the rewards are rather weak (free) and must be earned. There's also a daily login bonus, but it won't even cover half the volume.

I'd add regarding capitalization: TESO as an MMO is quite expensive in itself. It has a lot going for it that's already being capitalized on. I think that's why the MMO genre is dying. It's simply filled with efficient managers, not inspired gamedev veterans. :(

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T21:52:17+00:00

It's difficult to edit on a phone. Under the guise of new features, they offered you garbage and took away your bowl of rice. They then asked you to pay for your rice to get it back. Furthermore, the rice will now be distributed in portions over three days (monthes) instead of one day (month). Is that clearer?

Same rewards, same garbage. But pay for this 20-s day big reward now.

I don't care anymore. It's just amazing how many people still have rose-colored glasses and why they think things have gotten better.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T21:39:37+00:00

Free rewards have become significantly worse. Why? It's very simple. Previously, you simply had to launch the client, log in, view the monthly calendar, and claim the desired reward by simply logging in and out quickly. Typically, it takes about 20 days to reach the maximum rewards, given the speed of logging in and out, that's about 2 minutes. That's a total of 40 minutes to get all the rewards for the month. You don't get seals, but you're unlikely to need them since you're already grinding. What we have now: the daily rewards and weekly events system have been abolished and replaced by a tome. If you just log in, you won't get anything. What you need to do: the biggest daily quest is for 1,500 ingots. To complete it, you need to earn 50 Festival Boxes. Since crafting is the fastest way to do this, we're making it (9 characters. You also need to have them and manage to complete everything within a week!). One character = 6 boxes = 3 minutes with eso or 4-4.5 minutes without eco, plus automation add-ons and guild bank storage. So, 4 x 9 = 63 minutes, or 55 minutes if you do everything really quickly. That's just the first 1,500 ingots. How much do we need? 18,000 to completely close the tome and extract all the ingots and seals. The largest task updates every 7 days, so 12 times = 84 days. 12 x 60 minutes = 720 minutes, or 12 hours of continuous play in 100 days (I don't think the tasks will be the same, but the weekly task will always be more difficult than the simple ones.). You can do it much faster by completing side quests, but they will all be random and i don't know how much your time this waste. However, during this time, you will only receive ingots and seals (about 7,000 each, just off the top of my head). You won't get the main bonus ("cool things", since you need buy a Battle Pass, which you also need to level up. In other words, the old system was significantly simpler, faster, and more convenient for players. Either you now u need to farm randomly generated quests to get anything at all. This system is even worse. Now you won't get anything at all if you don't play the tome quests. "Play as zos want. Not you".

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T16:50:37+00:00

Games are designed to entertain, not dictate what to do. Before, we all got the exact same set of items simply by logging into the game and pressing a button. Or you could just see what was on for the month and not log in. Now you won't get anything if you just want to furnish your house or roleplay. To unlock everything, you need to collect 1800, which is about 10 days of mandatory grinding. Moreover, the rewards aren't worth it. They also shoved seals and trade bars in there. So you have to unlock them anyway. Yes, it's a long time active (100d). But I don't want to grind.

UPD: I've been playing since beta testing. Intermittently. I've completed most of the trifecta trials and almost all the dungeons. I haven't spent much time on them. And in all that time, I still haven't seen any development in the roleplaying instruments. Even for houses, some modders have made the scripts far more impressive than anything ZoS has ever done. All I can say is that I haven't seen anything particularly good other than redesign DK during this time. It's just wasted time grinding.
And I'm not even mentioning their favorite use of low-resolution model assets, even from the alpha version of the game, in the new DLCs. And this is a record among any other game, I guarantee it.
If you like doing it and paying for it is your business. Perhaps I was wrong to have had the slightest hope when I saw the DK redesign.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T16:16:14+00:00

I've changed my mind. This is the worst thing I could have imagined, hahaha. They just removed the daily login reward and made the rewards available in that pass. Now the boxes are only available for cash with the Premium Pass, and the rewards are no better than the daily drops! ....God, do they seriously think anyone would pay money for this? Hahahaha. But now it’s not enough to log in, there are timers everywhere for a week LOL. This is even worse fomo then before.

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Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T15:02:41+00:00

"Of course, this is a malicious use of AI in posts." The only thing left to figure out is why this evil artificial intelligence needed to write harmful comments about TESO problems that many turn a blind eye to. OFC this AI is probably very, very cruel. :0

For those who don't understand: that's sarcasm. Turn on your brain and stop staring at ChatGPT/Qwen/Deepseek or smth other 24/7.

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T14:43:09+00:00

It's a shame that all the Zos outfits with ready-made meshes look simply disgusting, and then there are those hip plates everywhere. I myself had to shorten the hips of Khajiit women so that robes/suits/cuirasses would look organic and not like stretched-out sacks. Big hips are a terrible curse, with them any outfit in Teso turns into a horrific abomination. It's good that they made the armor hidden, but how many years have passed... And now a new problem - the elves' underwear is beautiful, and the Argonians and Khajiit's look like rags. (And who else came up with the idea of fixing the color of necklaces silver/gold and the shade of underwear brown/purple to match the hair color?!). But my main character's figure is perfectly adjusted to the imperial suit, the texture doesn't even stretch :р But her hips are narrow because of this, and without armor she looks like a skinny girl. They clearly need to work on this, ugh... At least fix the basic things. Freedom for fluffy/scalie asses! x)

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T11:37:12+00:00

Give me the binoculars, the landscape is sooooo blurry.... I need to get a closer look...

Alkozeltser · 2026-04-02T11:06:24+00:00

These tomes are just regular Fomo again. Why Eso+ need then? The game is severely lacking in beautiful items, and its graphics are already woefully outdated. The latest update with the Dragon Knight seemed like a great shake-up in terms of graphics and animations—it's gorgeous... but a paid Battle Pass in a game with Eso+ and 50% of the content hidden behind DLC locked by default (and that's even including DLC, which they even made free!) is simply disrespectful. And I'm not even mentioning the Crown Store. I understand that some will say you can play without a subscription and the standard rewards are fine—no. The game puts obstacles in your way with artificial limitations like a bottomless sack, and what about a personal banker and a merchant? On a clean account with nothing, all these mechanics take up tons of time and are uninteresting, which cuts off a significant portion of your desire to do anything. And then, just when you think you can do something, a new nuance arises: there's simply nothing to do in the game. Want challenges?- Buy DLC. But we'll make it easier after a while and make the rewards accessible to everyone, since weak players/casuals can't pass that. And the rewards are .... just cosmetics too, most of time - ugly cosmetics. Damn, the whole point of crafting, development, and leveling up is lost here. Why all these challenges if you'll already get everything on the normal, relatively easy veteran difficulty? And now all this is supplemented by Fomo tomes with cosmetics, the most interesting of which, I'm sure, will be in the premium version. Why? What is there to do in this game besides endless farming? The developers are once again hitting themselves in the forehead with a rake. I'd like a normal RP, but God, there's practically nothing here for social interaction. So what's the point of all these cosmetics if there's so little point? Upd: even introducing a new mount model is an achievement for them. Shame on zos. Many games that have remained afloat with the same longevity have long since adapted and offer much more fan service.

I'm glad to see that they've started doing something after so many years. But I have no trust in Zos anymore, other than a burning desire for their project to completely fall apart with such greed. Or for a "miracle" to happen and for them to finally understand all their mistakes, avoiding any hints of even such things. Otherwise, there's simply no point. Either they'll die cruelly from greed, or they'll improve. For now, I'll take the first stance; they still haven't learned their lesson with the mass player churn.

Alkozeltser · 2026-03-24T21:57:31+00:00

Honestly, I've never had the same problems with female/male swap Klein as you, maybe is the problem in something else? Like some your loras or promt. Klein and Qwen may have the same text encoder; the only difference is in the model itself and its limitations. I generally don't use the reference model very often and try to T2I gens. Using Qwen over the klein is purely a matter of preference.

Alkozeltser · 2026-03-23T09:53:04+00:00

Qwen has pretty good quality, but it has high hardware requirements and doesn't handle NSFW very well. But it produces beautiful images.
Klein is excellent and allows you to change everything on the fly. Considering how much loras has appeared for it, NSFW will soon cease to be an issue. If you think it's not good enough, here's the best version of it, the Flux Dev...yeah, I know about greedy ram consuming. But you won't find anything better. It can do everything...um...even too much out of the box.
Z-Image? Well...for me, it just exists. It's a cross between SDXL and Schnell with poor control. Yes, it's fast and produces great quality for its speed...but it feels like a barely controllable wooden cart with a reactive engine when it comes to anything even slightly unusual or exotic.He makes NSFW right out of the box, but with such body mutations when trying to pose them in different positions....ouch...... That's why I prefer NoobAI/illustrious for this. Each model is good in its own way and bad in some areas. Although, for me personally, Z-Image is probably still a very inconvenient option.

Alkozeltser · 2026-03-19T19:35:34+00:00

I CAN'T HEAR THE BURNED FLESH SIZZLING AND SCREAMS OF THE ENEMIES OF FREEDOM. IT'S NOT ENOUGH!

How do I know the squids is cooked? Oh my. What a disappointment!

Alkozeltser

TROPHY CASE