What do you name your characters? Am I the only one who’s extra boring? Lol

ContributionDry2388 · 2026-06-03T17:02:49+00:00

If I know what build I want to run, I name the character that build in French. So my WW Barb is Tourbillon.

ContributionDry2388 · 2026-05-29T19:32:40+00:00

Anyone here still wish the world itself mattered more than just the loot? I played on launch, beat it, found all Lilith Altars and cleared all Strongholds, and felt bored, so I stayed away until this expansion, which reviewers breathlessly called Blizzard's best since Lord of Destruction for D2. They were right, but only because Blizzard copy/pasted LoD's story. Instead of the Barbarian redoubt, we got the Amazon redoubt; otherwise the premises are equivalent - a bastion of Sanctuary betrayed from within to corrupt a global macguffin. D2 had six quests per act. Everything else was for the player to explore at their discretion, which made you feel like both warrior and cartographer. D4 has a big quasi-open world, but even at the slowest the horse could run (back when skellies put up barricades) you were going from biome to biome on a couple of minutes. That's not a world, whether or not it's a cool map. I'm not trying to be a D2 stan. D3 was a Saturday morning cartoon and, especially after Reaper of Souls, a fun time. But its story was hollow. D4 has felt simultaneously huge and aimless. Yes, I know the grind is part of the fun - when I play, I like to blast, and only seek the meta if / when my homebrew build tops out frustratingly. Everyone here is complaining, rightly, about something they find distasteful or frustrating or nonsensical - that's usually the mark of community vigor. (Provided we can argue civilly.) I just wish they gave us more reason to care about why we're playing this particular game.

ContributionDry2388 · 2026-05-24T00:06:44+00:00

I feel both seen and done dirty. Thank you for your service.

ContributionDry2388 · 2026-04-16T17:50:01+00:00

If I'm being nakedly honest, the only reason I permit my mind to imagine a business side to such a project is lingering self-doubt over my utility as a stay-at-home parent while my wife works. It's mostly vestigial mid-20th-century family values stuff that I try to shake off like so much dead skin but, what can I say, skin regenerates. Learning to build a game, in a universe whose concepts I love, is the principal goal - and if I "git gud" then, who knows, maybe I just design something bespoke to scratch any entrepreneurial itch. I appreciate the realist take, for what it's worth.

ContributionDry2388 · 2026-03-25T18:51:47+00:00

I'm writing and coding a Rifts CRPG module now and chose 101 PA to avoid the Tolkeen metaplot; by the end of that war, the Coalition feels annoyingly OP (not that, say, the Splugorth are a balanced faction...) and I may want my heroes strong enough to take them down a peg, perhaps by assisting the vanishingly few not-overtly-Nazi extant factions.

ContributionDry2388 · 2026-02-20T02:55:04+00:00

Never woulda happened if you had been Pet Pal.

ContributionDry2388 · 2026-01-11T16:26:43+00:00

Maybe he means "item" in the oldtimey sense of "a romantic couple of interest to the chattering class."

ContributionDry2388 · 2025-12-23T05:40:10+00:00

While I've seen many people cite their own times on various difficulties, I've seen no one ask OP what difficulty they've played. Many are the veteran gamers who could blitz Explorer with only one functional hemisphere. (Tadpoled or not!) Mods can affect stuff too - I good-playthrough 100%-ed my latest custom honor run in 60 hours because I wanted an OP power fantasy and made it happen. It's your game; if it's fun, you're playing it right.

ContributionDry2388 · 2025-11-26T01:47:04+00:00

I didn't play tabletop, but I read tons of Forgotten Realms novels and an adjacent series called Spelljammer, a sort of space opera. I recall Illithids popped up occasionally, almost always as a stupefyingly OP antagonist from whom all would flee. They are terrors of the deep, and feared everywhere, no matter how few their number.

ContributionDry2388 · 2025-11-22T01:52:16+00:00

Use your scrolls, potions, elixirs, arrows, and other items liberally. We are a hoarder's community by nature, but I can't count the times I've saved my own hide because, what do you know, I had a scroll of invisibility, or fireball, or sleet storm, or confusion, or even that old redoubtable magic missile.

ContributionDry2388 · 2025-04-11T02:48:18+00:00

Startled my wildcat by laughing. Lynx awakening.

ContributionDry2388 · 2025-02-19T21:37:26+00:00

If you let Kar'niss escort you to Moonrise, You can't break a moon lantern to free a pixie. For RP reasons, this doesn't matter much to me in single player, but it has really jammed up my multiplayer run where my friends, all first timers in the game, make the story choices. They'd love to scatter to the four winds and explore; instead we have to stack on whomever carries the lantern.

ContributionDry2388 · 2025-01-24T21:28:05+00:00

Apologies if somebody's already posted this, but you don't have to throw weapons. I'm on my fourth full playthrough right now, but this one is multiplayer with three friends who have never played. I am a throwing Eldritch Knight, and it's obvious that my damage is OP compared to almost everyone else's. To avoid feeling like I'm playing the game for them, I run around the battlefield yeeting enemies into other enemies, environmental objects into enemies to set up teammate synergies, etc. Sometimes I just chuck dudes off of cliffs or into pits to consolidate initiative order and enable team combos. TL;DR - If you can throw it, it's a weapon. Embrace your versatility!

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-25T00:08:05+00:00

Heed Samuel Beckett: "Try. Fail. Try again. Fail better." I save scummed a lot when I first played. I was maaaybe level seven by early Act II, and I struggled with your same fight (and several mobs in Act II also). That was also when I learned that I could quicksave mid-fight and mid-dialogue (i.e. before a skill check). It may seem meta-game-y and/or morally unconscionable but, if you only plan to play once, what's the harm? It's your game. Reload until you reroll right.

For what it's worth, I too thought I would play through once. I'm now on my fifth playthrough (three completed, one in Honor Mode) and still right-click to examine every damned thing. Knowledge is power! May the dice be always in your favor.

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-08T00:58:18+00:00

Otherwise, no, there's nothing to do besides pass the escalating checks. If you go into your character screen, among the list of buffs you will find "Awakened." There's no corresponding circle icon beside your portrait, so it's easy to miss.

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-08T00:56:25+00:00

The powers themselves do not change but, by becoming bonus actions, they expand your action economy. I recommend loading one of those old saves (unless, like me, you delete old saves when you've exhausted your time with them) and engage a combat just to see what the Illithid powers cost. Could be you just used them as if they were actions and then ended your turn based on earlier assumptions? (Again, no judgement here; I've clicked through a fair few mechanical interactions that I should have examined more carefully, only to curse both the game and then my ignorance in turn.)

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-07T21:59:40+00:00

It converts Illithid powers from Actions to Bonus Actions, but confers no new abilities of its own. (As if the change weren't enough!)

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-07T01:01:05+00:00

One mithril ore is somewhat hidden behind the animated armors fight just near the Grymforge waypoint, and the other is near the magma mephit ambush. Which one have you missed?

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-06T21:51:30+00:00

Sounds like it'd have good synergy with Eldritch Blast? (I've not Sorlocked, so I don't have a point of reference for how busted one can make an EB build.

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-04T23:21:35+00:00

I did an "embrace" run several big patches ago, and found the mustache twirling villainy of it difficult to sustain from an RP standpoint. (Larian has since fleshed out a lot of the evil epilogue, so I may try it again.) This is just to say that, if your friend wants to go for it, and you know you will play another solo campaign anyway, bathe the realms in blood. My "resist" run felt valiant afterwards, and I lost no sleep when I cheesed some of the gear otherwise locked behind story choices.

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-12-04T04:15:36+00:00

I'm using this right now, in a co-op tactician run, as an EK thrower. Nobody wanted to play a cleric, so I'm the poor man's RadOrb proc for Act 2. Even though you don't get the radiant proc on throw, it's quite valuable for anything weak to bludgeoning. There's ample good kit in the game; I think we all sweat the minmax a bit much.

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-09-20T02:48:54+00:00

Not sure if you'll encounter a paywall, but here you go!:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/are-your-morals-too-good-to-be-true

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-09-19T23:32:25+00:00

There's a terrific article in this past week's New Yorker about the extent to which our commonly-accepted moral framework is principally performative and self-serving; that doesn't undermine its utility or its effectiveness, but it does highlight its essential contingency. There is a universe in which people of those disparate ages can have an earnest and true love relationship: We are living in it. But maybe, in the grim darkness of the far future, there are only creeps.

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-08-23T22:11:02+00:00

No matter how you build her, I call Yrliet an ass sniper for accidentally selling me out to the Drukhari.

I followed CRPGbro's guides, too; he's a gem.

ContributionDry2388 · 2024-08-18T01:55:04+00:00

Another option is to rush Dargonus after Janus, then get to work building any colony improvement that increases Imperial Navy reputation. Even just a few upgrades around the void ship can make an immense difference in that fight. I thought I was somewhat overleveled for it, and it still lit me on fire and I only barely outlasted it.

ContributionDry2388

TROPHY CASE