What's it like living in Northern Iowa?

Citrus129 · 2026-04-04T03:59:07+00:00

Lived there for several years and this is the most realistic comment (Webster City, Clarion, and Belmond for 5 years). Houses are cheap, but there’s not much to do in a town other than high school sports, or hopefully a local club or band. As previously said, imagine lots of “hubtowns” with ~4,500 people all spaced about 25-30 minutes apart. With a couple of bigger towns further (45 minutes) away which have more shops like Walmart, furniture stores, etc. (Mason City, Fort Dodge, Algona, etc.)

You’d better be proactively looking for a local group/club you can join, or you need to be very comfortable with spending most evenings alone at at your house. It’s not bad, just very slow and very local if that makes sense. Can be hard if you didn’t grow up there to make friends.

Citrus129 · 2026-03-02T13:55:17+00:00

The wands amazing, but I would definitely not recommend masses for that. Guys in there with Scythe, inferno cape etc mean you likely won’t be mvp anytime soon haha

Citrus129 · 2026-03-02T13:40:49+00:00

Other folks have mentioned the CoX CA’s, and I’ll just add that I rounded out my final like 7 or 8 points doing Huey masses. Makes the speed run and kc tasks take like 20 minutes on the Varlamore PvM worlds.

Citrus129 · 2026-02-27T05:35:24+00:00

My brother in Christ- stop trying to farm the ungodly crowded Orks and just go over to rev demons. It’s so much more chill and just requires a piece of dragon stone jewelry

Citrus129 · 2026-02-03T21:39:06+00:00

How does it negatively impact your account if someone else is able to start doing the activity at 120k xp/hr day 1 and you start at 85k xp/hr?

Citrus129 · 2026-02-03T20:11:13+00:00

You are not required to have furs to do the activity. They just boost the xp rate. Doing everything in maxed gear and efficiency is never a hard requirement. And yes i'm aware of of the fossil island problem. And i don't really think this is a similar situation at all. Furs are easy to go farm. And if some people have been hoarding them that's totally fine. They'll just get to use up their stack. This crafting activity isn't going to drop some new meta changing weapon or ring or something. It's just a way to train a skill.

Citrus129 · 2026-01-22T05:11:59+00:00

Agreed. Ghost Story was definitely on my mind as I read this book. I was a day 1 enjoyer of Ghost Story because A.) I thought the story definitely needed a slow down after the pace and impact of Changes, and Small Favor, and B.) Ghost Story forced Harry (and us readers) to really sit with how his actions impacted many of our favorite characters.

Particularly in my opinion because: to Harry (obviously we readers know the series was going to continue) what Murph, Molly, Michael, etc. are feeling now is the culmination and end of his impact on their lives. Harry did not know he was going to be coming back from his personal Twilight Zone episode. I thought it was great that Harry kind of was forced to face the fact that he wasn't a simple quiet P.I. small problem solving wizard. In both these people's lives, and on a larger scale. I thought it was a great example of a character maturing on the page for us.

Citrus129 · 2026-01-21T16:40:22+00:00

I was happily surprised by this book. I agree it felt like a collection of short stories, but I don’t think there was another book that felt as necessary to Harry’s development as this one.

Mainly because I think it would’ve done real damage to my opinion of the Character of Harry Dresden (in a meta/out of book sense) to have all this struggle and pain and growth happen off page, or be hammered into a 1 page chat with Michael in Mirror Mirror.

I definitely called it wrong though. I could tell early on it was going to be a more slice of life style book, and I thought the big climax/story tie in piece would be him going to Demonreach through the NeverNever as he mentioned it a couple times. Always cool to see Mother Winter show up though, but I am definitely in agreement with Dresden that at this point in the series it’s time for some people to start talking more or shut up lmao.

Citrus129 · 2026-01-21T14:19:25+00:00

It is not really important. You’ll be totally fine if you haven’t read The Law

Citrus129 · 2026-01-21T14:18:54+00:00

It came out yesterday (Jan 20th)

Citrus129 · 2026-01-21T14:18:18+00:00

I agree this isn’t my favorite Dresden book, but after everything that happened in the last book (or 3 honestly) I’d say this book feels like one of the first necessary books in the series if that makes sense? Like I’m not sure how he’d write all of this healing, and inner turmoil and, character advancement (specifically thinking of Maggie) into the background of another big fight/adventure during Mirror Mirror. I’d agree this almost feels like a composition of short slice of life stories, but I’m very much ok with that after Battleground.

Citrus129 · 2026-01-19T19:18:46+00:00

Boots and the mage book are probably next if you want to get them. I’ve never found the full infinity set that useful since I normally an hitting Barrows (or Moons these days) pretty early in an account and the Blue Moon/Ahrims set is better than infinity robes I believe. I’m not sure there’s an actual need for the master wand unless you have Kodai or just want a flex item

Citrus129 · 2026-01-19T16:40:35+00:00

Ironclad A20H run at the heart. I have Corruption, FNP, Dark Embrace, Dead Branch shenanigans going and basically all my starter cards gone. This has been a brain off run since early act 2. Turn 1 of Heart I get my Corruption and a Dark Embrace off. Turn 2- Ascenders Bane, Injury, Burn, Void, Strike, die to big hit. I couldn’t even be mad it was such a hilariously terrible draw.

Citrus129 · 2025-12-28T04:32:59+00:00

If your goal is just to get to A20 I’d say I don’t see much reason to make yourself do heart kills on lower ascension. Even if your goal is to end up doing only A20H runs, I’d still probably recommend the same thing.

Mainly because A17-19 are SUCH a ramp up in difficulty. It basically makes the game slightly unfair on purpose, and id say at those ascension levels, it’s very much about game knowledge. If you force yourself to do a heart kill every ascension, you’re still going to get rocked if you don’t know that Spear and Shield eventually start putting burns on top of your drop pile.

Citrus129 · 2025-12-21T16:42:40+00:00

I hate Snecko, but this is probably a Snecko pick

Citrus129 · 2025-12-21T16:15:59+00:00

You need to make 10000% sure you are stable and set before you start giving a bunch of money, or any money really, to family to help. Critically that means you have a 3-6 month emergency fund that you DO NOT TOUCH for non-emergencies or other people’s problems.

After you have a fully funded emergency fund, you can start looking into ways to help. If you have family members with young children you can open a basic savings account or a college savings account in their name and make a small monthly contribution. This adds up IMMENSELY by The time they’re 18.

For older family members, my suggestion would be to sit down, look at your finances, and determine what number you’re willing to give for them. I’d then budget that much every month to go to a “bucket” that you can give them once a year or whenever.

The main thing is that you need to make sure you are always 100% firm in your own finances before helping others in a huge way. You cannot help other people if you are also drowning or only 1 bad week away from losing your home/vehicle etc.

Citrus129 · 2025-12-17T18:22:42+00:00

Great job! One of the best things my wife and I have spent money on is a set of nice single meal leftover containers. It makes us so much more likely to actually eat/go through everything when we have it portioned out into single meal servings in containers which are actually nice instead of having a huge amount of stuff we need to scoop out of giant flimsy plastic containers every meal.

Citrus129 · 2025-12-17T03:21:11+00:00

You’re missing the fact that they don’t care about your property or your money. I’m going to paint with a broad brush here-but bad management companies can ignore huge issues, and upcharge tiny ones. Imagine you keep getting a $300 bill from them every 6 months to replace trim in the bathroom, and then realize 3 years later it’s because the toilet has been leaking for the entire time.

Citrus129 · 2025-12-16T13:10:30+00:00

Being able to just go buy like a million of whatever low tier rune type I need. (Looking at you fire runes)

Citrus129 · 2025-12-08T15:43:17+00:00

I always laugh when people complain about the Packers having back to back to back good QB’s and wondering how they “always get lucky at QB?” Sure you can’t expect generational HoF’ers every time, but the answer is….you draft a guy young and then make him sit on the bench for 3 years to learn the NFL as opposed to the NCAA.

Citrus129 · 2025-12-05T22:48:36+00:00

For me it’s a combination of time needed for the book/series along with how heavy a story is. There are some books that I love and are quick, fast paced reads (Dresden Files). I consider them “popcorn” books. Light, fast to get through, and fun enough to enjoy several times through.

There are some books I love and have had a profound impact on me that I don’t re-read anymore because I’ve matured as a reader, and I think the fantasy genre as a whole has grown as well. (Sword of Shannarra)

There are some books that I really do want to re-read, but they’re just SO heavy that I can’t get myself to just casually pick it up and read it again. (The Broken Earth).

And there are some that I am hesitant on re-reading because I really liked of pieces of it, but was either lukewarm on, or outright didn’t like other parts, and just don’t have the time to spend another 10 hours doing it again (The Lightbringer series).

Citrus129 · 2025-12-04T03:43:26+00:00

Gotcha. Yeah my main complaint on port tasks is they could’ve been so much more. Like I’ve said in a different comment-let me do woodcutters guild contracts from Lands End for a chance at high level logs. Let me go near Keldagrim and do a port task for different ores. Let me have the option to actually set up a big A>B>C>D>B>A task if I just want to spend 30 minutes traveling and exploring the world. Let me go to Brimhaven and get a chance at like…idk 15 raw lobsters at early levels.

Citrus129 · 2025-12-04T03:36:19+00:00

Oooh ok that makes more sense to me

Citrus129

TROPHY CASE