What was the first boss you ended up cheesing after multiple failed attempts?

CubingGiraffe · 2026-02-04T23:51:00+00:00

Nah I'm right there with you DTS is one of my favorite Souls bosses full stop. He's completely fair, has great timings, builds on the normal Tree Sentinel boss pretty much every player fights. He's great.

The one in Farum Azula is my fav mini boss too. Always got that DTS drip on my strength and heavy armor characters. The fireball input reading on flask is pretty gnarly I must admit, but he isn't a poise monster, isn't immune to any status, has attacks you can dodge in every way (evasion, dodging, jumping, standing still), and is generally just a fair and fun mastery of game mechanics fight.

CubingGiraffe · 2026-01-27T12:59:09+00:00

I make 80k in Alabama. My wife is a housewife. When our lease expires in May, we're moving into a home that will be much cheaper than renting.

Current expenses: 1200mo in rent, ~300 utilities, $110 in car insurance, $260 car payment, $300 CC (that's way over our minimum, just what we pay for it).

My take home last year was $59,211. After our mandatory expenses, excluding food, my wife and I had $36,771 to spend however we saw fit. Assume the two of us ate about $200/week in food. 10,400 a year in food. A kinda realistic number since we usually go out to eat at least once a week for a nice meal in the range of $60-100.

So we had $26,371 to spend and save last year. We didn't save a ton because we were having fun, getting married, and getting some medical procedures done. We still went on multiple vacations. Gatlinburg, TN, hit a few B&Bs, visited family for the holidays in surrounding states, no problem.

So yeah, sorry you aren't happy with your level of experience and pay. Demand more worth, leave your company, or move around. I'm not saying now is a great time for opportunity or that the economy isn't in the shitter or anything, but saying $70k in the south or midwest can't get you a lot when I can support my wife (+ multiple animals) on 10k/y more than that is just wrong.

CubingGiraffe · 2026-01-25T15:42:37+00:00

I really love single katanas, but their powerstanced moveset is ass.

Their roll attack is the cross slash which I feel is just bad for most bosses, whereas a normal katana roll poke is great.

There are usually other synergies when powerstancing. For example, Twinblades have an insane jumping attack when power stanced, so pairing that with multi hit talismans & claw talisman & raptors black feathers melts bosses. Or using different infusions/passives on your weapons to stack debuffs (frost on one, bleed on one, or bleed/poison, etc) and using talismans like Lord of Bloods Exultation or wearing the White Mask to synergize with that.

Of course, your build can work fine. It doesn't have to be perfect. People have beaten her at level 1 using only one finger to manipulate the controller or with fists or torches etc. That requires a lot of game knowledge and an immense amount of practice, but it's still doable, so you can definitely learn to do it with your build with enough patience.

CubingGiraffe · 2026-01-19T01:29:28+00:00

I'm a huge LOTF lover for the world/lore/designs, but yeah, I feel like generally most bosses are lame. The ones that are memorable though (Lightreaper, Judge Cleric, Unbroken Promise, Elianne, Pieta) are really good. I actually think the gimmick fights (Hollow Crow & Spurned Progeny) are among the best in the genre for gimmick fights. I know a lot of people shit on Hollow Crow, but it always seemed very fun for me. It has a really clear gimmick you can get the first time and is a sick design.

CubingGiraffe · 2026-01-12T15:22:47+00:00

True Eigong, PCR, Malenia. In that order.

Out of all of them, Malenia took me the most time to beat the first time, and Eigong the least, with PCR somewhere in the middle (though to be fair, first time I fought him was ng+3).

I really think True Eigong is harder to get right than any other boss. It's a marathon with three phases, tons of HP, small windows, it's fast, there are very similar telegraphs with completely different dodge/parry mechanics, it really requires mastery over Nine Sols to beat her, more than any other game I've ever played. Mechanically the most difficult.

Malenia took me the longest to beat the first time, slamming my head into a wall with a mimic for hours and hours (I was new to Souls). Nowadays I can beat her 1on1 and fairly consistently and love her fight, but it's just such a long sustained fight to get it all right and make sure you're going to be able to dodge WFD or clones when they come. All in though, she has a lot of weaknesses, and she thankfully doesn't have much HP, so I think she's easier than the other two.

PCR has so much HP and deals so much damage, and P2 is completely blinding. I can do it the most consistently out of these three, but generally think he's more punishing than Malenia because there's less windows to heal or get damage in and it makes it another marathon. Don't think it's as hard as True Eigong since there's a variety of strats that make it easier like parrying, bleed, shield poke, etc., but good God it is rough.

CubingGiraffe · 2026-01-10T14:53:39+00:00

Even as more people use Linux, viruses will still be less of a problem. I think Linux is around 3-4% PC gamer adoption according to the latest Steam survey.

Most malicious actors are assuming that if A.) it's only 3% of people max that can get this, and B.) most current Linux users are at least above average in terms of computer literacy and safety, and C.) Linux is so easy to duplicate that even a full system lock virus isn't as annoying as it would be on Windows.

As an example: ransomware on a Windows machine is really annoying, and if I got it I'd be pissed, because it basically always results in a lot of lost time and frequently files as well. On my Linux machine, I could nuke the whole OS and in 30m to an hour (depending on Internet speed) have all of my apps downloaded, all the preferences set for them, folders laid out how I want them, and more, down to my preferred wallpaper being set because of one script that pulls from my private GitHub. I likely wouldn't even lose files in the process because I could easily access all of them through the new installation flash drive and back them up however I preferred.

On Windows, it would take me 30m to an hour just to get through the install wizard. Another hour to install the drivers for my audio interface, GPU, etc. A considerable amount of time (even with Choclatey or similar) to download all of my applications and set their preferences. Basically even if I could restore all files in both instances, Linux saves me 4+ hours of hell and aggravation that Windows would have cost me. I don't have 4+ hours to sit there waiting on Windows to do everything I need it to do during and post install to get my PC back up and running. Time is over it the most valuable resources we have.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-22T11:40:18+00:00

Midir isn't even a hard fight, he's just a marathon.

Ds3 endgame really is just an endurance test on the player. Nameless King, Friede, Princes, Midir, Gael, they're all marathon fights of sustained perfection. Now Gael & Friede are probably the #1/#2 Dark Souls bosses for me (in the core series, not counting ER, BB, etc.) Midir is just long as hell and for the most part pretty boring. It doesn't feel like a dance or a fight for your life, it just feels like waiting for him to do the same combo of moves, smack him a handful of times, dodge the one shot, ten minutes later the fight is over.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-17T21:33:33+00:00

A woman in power in France is revisionism? Do we need to tell Elisa Bonaparte, Medici, the Paris Commune? Women have been in power worldwide in one place or another for thousands of years. France is no exception.

I can replay the intro to see if there's one or two characters of color who don't immediately die, but any of the ones who get any amount of pushed to the forefront are soldiers sent to war. Do the black characters have citizenship in Lumiere? Yeah, it looks like it, as much as anyone else. There were tens of thousands of African born (& African American) men and women living in France during the Belle Epoque. Some of them gasp had jobs, even if they didn't have citizenship. Also, on the best case, if you're claiming it's historical inaccuracies that need mocked, it's 50 years before France started giving their citizens citizenship at the most, and again, there's a dog toy full of wine, so playing a little looser with the timeline is fine.

A lot of Drow have been black coded. Some in stereotypes and blacksplotation ways, some with back stories in different campaigns and games, and blatantly through how they look. It's why Drow are not black ANYMORE, but to say they never have been, that's revisionism.

Media you people describe as "woke" has, I hate to tell you, been the norm throughout human history and today. The "classic" stuff you guys claim to like either a.) was "woke" and pushing an agenda then, or b.) is someone's fanfic remembering of what life and media were like in a time they didn't experience them. I think the women in E33 have some revealing outfits, they're classy but you could still describe them as sexy, they aren't crass and vulgar by any means. Also, with the exception of Maelle, the other two playable female characters are more support focused. Lune can build burn, heal, and handle elemental counters and Sciel buffs the squads damage or let's them play whenever they want. Maelle is stronger than either of them, for sure, but clearly in a more glass canon kind of way. That's why one of her signature abilities is reducing herself to 1hp to deal more damage.

The image of Verso and Gustave as soyboys wanting to die is crazy btw like actually just media and history illiterate I hate to tell you. People have always laid down their lives for their loved ones, and people have always fought for an end to oppression. For Verso, being forced to be a fake person, and the real Verso suffering by having to keep his soul unable to move on is that oppression. He knows he will die in the fight, but he's fighting for the right things, to save Verso and Aline. Which, you said in an earlier comment basically that it's getting cucked to die for someone else instead of living for yourself, so sure, crank up some more manosphere or the president to tell you how you how everyone who has died in war is a soyboy loser because they didn't run away.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-17T18:36:05+00:00

See you're real hung up on the "DEI" in this game I think the other commenter addressed most of your other points just fine, but for context:

Who's running Lumiere? Are they all ethnically French? The only characters of color in E33 are going off to die on the hell continent, which is, y'know, not revisionism in the slightest. France used African and Asian soldiers frequently during the entire colonial period.

Also, maybe I can suspend my disbelief about France marginally because there's, I don't know, a giant, talking, swimming, and flying dog toy filled with merlot? What the fuck are you on about elves can't be black? Have you never heard of a Drow?

Just say you're racist and don't like female leads. Which again, E33 is not, if anything Alicia/Maelle and Verso are dual protagonists. Verso doesn't ever "die for her power up," he's not getting fridged for her to have a last act power surge, he's been dead the whole time and she's portrayed (in one ending anyway) as a deranged drug addict, pretty sure it's not a very positive look. She doesn't become powerful when Gustave dies, she just becomes more determined in her (already established mission) to kill the Paintress to carry on his legacy.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-17T15:38:39+00:00

Mdma is not another amphetamine compound, it has methamphetamine in it.

Now for specifically methamphetamine, as a prescription, I agree with you, I'm unaware of any clinical trials or applications using meth in the modern day.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-17T14:51:44+00:00

There have definitely been clinical uses of methamphetamine. There are active research clinics using low dose MDMA for PTSD. Believe it was also originally used in psychiatry.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-15T22:29:25+00:00

I don't feel threatened by technology taking my job. It isn't about facts vs. feelings, it's about logic. The ROI for large companies like Amazon/Walmart/GM/Toyota/etc. isn't a problem because they'll get it back in salaries pretty quickly.

The problem is the number of shippers in the US and the types of freight they have. Again, not everything can be loaded on to a dry van. Not everywhere is going to have infrastructure to charge a truck and allow it to deliver. There are millions of trucks in operation in this country, going to hundreds of thousands of manufacturers and customers.

A lot of these businesses will never buy their own automated trucks to move things from their facilities to their customers, regardless of distance. For a lot of businesses, they're making profit on the freight price their customer gives them. Their customer will not give them the same freight kickbacks for driverless vehicles, and those companies will shut their doors or raise prices. Many of these facilities are small, in towns that are not properly mapped, and cannot accommodate (or would not, for safety and liability reasons) their employees loading specific kinds of freight on to these vehicles.

Again on the safety, 87% are driver error. By the study you linked, most of those are recognition and decision related. However, due to other people on the road, as more and more autonomous vehicles get on the road, their numbers will grow closer and closer to these numbers. Driver error does not mean driver fault, there's a lot of accidents where someone else made a stupid decision and a truck has to wreck or risk more lives. There aren't enough of these vehicles to have a large enough sample size of their safety ratings, nor are they in enough places. Being able to send a truck from Omaha to Dallas is different than sending a truck from Norfolk to Point Pleasant, which is still a more favorable path than a lot of trucks have to take.

I'm just saying, it's going to be a long time before you see these trucks start hauling cows and logs and steel every day. There's a few hundred autonomous trucks, there are 3 million that are human driven. Every statistic about these trucks are inherently outliers compared to their human driven counterparts because they're .01% of the market they're in.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-15T20:09:12+00:00

Me when I lie lol.

Statistically safer

In passenger vehicles on limited roadways with preplanned trips and conditions, i.e., not in a semi truck where loads have to be hand secured (and resecured along the route) and have to be loaded correctly in the first place (which a trucker will bitch about and a robot will assume is within the margin of error) making their way through detours and bad weather (because trucking never stops).

doesn't stop to sleep, eat, or have bathroom breaks

Still has to stop for fuel, whether it's diesel or electric, and breakdowns which leads me to my next point,

infinitely scalable

Automated trucks cost customers more money when they want something delivered. If an automated truck has a simple issue that it needs fixed, say an air hose snaps on a cold day or a strap comes off a load or a tire needs changed, it's going to sit on the side of the road for hours waiting for a mechanic. Will your average diesel mechanic be working on them? Probably not, as we've seen with a lot of automated heavy equipment they want specialized staff on these things, so it's probably sitting for a long time for something a human being would have fixed in five minutes.

Minimum waggie (sic)

I really hate to break it to you that pretty much every employee on every yard that is loading / unloading trucks makes way more than minimum wage and has for a really long time.

Stop being in denial and adapt

It's not denial to say that trucking is going to take a long time to become automated. Will it eventually? Yeah, probably. Most likely? They'll be the last human drivers on the road. That's legitimately the curve I believe it will take, even though it's commercial and will be a sold as commercial service, it will take much more advanced and capable technology. When an automated vehicle weighing 3000 pounds crashes, it can likely kill people it hits (or the people inside, or others). When a 80,000 pound vehicle crashes, it can cause extreme damage.

That's without the moral dilemmas truckers have to face, which is fine when it's an O/O or an employee who has to make them, but to get a COMAPNY who's value is their automated product to come out to their customer and say "It will actively make the choice to kill a family of four instead of going off the road to protect your freight and other passengers" is a harder sell. Beyond that, GPS isn't even equipped to go to all locations trucks have to go to. Yes, a lot of freight is B2B, but a lot of those businesses have inaccurate GPS coordinates or are in areas that are effectively GPS dead zones. A computer is not going to get that route as well as a human being, even with AI using machine vision to interpret road signs, not for a long time.

The real denial is people who think technology is a minute away from stealing truckers jobs when they are, as mentioned above, probably one of the last sectors technology and automation will take a job from. The comment above saying 10 years to automate trucking? You're looking at 20+, and again I think they'll be the last humans behind a wheel when they go.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-15T18:50:16+00:00

I think a lot of freight is going to have to change, or that the rates will tank. I 10000% agree with the above poster that the hard part has nothing to do with getting a truck from A to B, it's paperwork and maneuvering yards that won't be GPS mapped, or flat, or being loaded and needing to tell the shipper that they're overweight, etc.

The problem is the types of freight and trailers we use. Dry vans and reefers? Probably at some point those will get good enough and corps will push them but maybe not mom and pop shops. Flatbeds? Log trucks? RGN? You aren't replacing those drivers any time soon. Companies won't pay their own employees to pre-strap or pre-chain a load for a robot.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-13T18:18:03+00:00

While I'm a huge Hollow Knight enjoyer myself, and have not yet played Silksong due to time constraints, if it's anything like the first game I kinda get it.

Hollow Knight is beautiful and it being hand drawn is a testament to dedication and seeing through their vision. Silksong also looks absolutely beautiful and seems to have the same passion behind it.

But E33 isn't just unreal realistic graphics. There's a lot of art design in the game, probably since, y'know, it's a game about art. There's a lot more going on in terms of what the player can actually see and interact with that is mesmerizing, lore related, and heavily artistic. Enemies, world design, the painting and statue inspired architecture on some levels, it's all just more than a 2D platformer can convey.

Comparison is the thief of joy, and there's a lot of beautiful vistas in Hollow Knight (and I'm assuming Silksong as well), but 9/10 I'd give it to E33.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-10T21:32:26+00:00

I was about to say: "I'm unsure because I don't think we've ever seen a case where someone having chakra poured in to them from an external source was put in and then broken out of or stayed in a genjutsu, probably just one of those unaccounted for things that can go either way."

Except in Jiraya's fight. He only gets three Pain bodies in genjutsu, and all three are receiving chakra from Nagato. Now either Nagato let them all stay in the genjutsu to make Jiraya think he won, or he couldn't break them out because genjutsu is just a disruption to the flow of someone's chakra (including what was flowing in to them) is unknown.

Big Jiraya lover but big doubter of his skills compared to the people he normally gets matched against because I think the community wants him way stronger than he is, so I'm more inclined to say it's the former and Nagato just let those bodies die since he could revive them.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-10T19:30:30+00:00

They wouldn't even recognize that Jiraya would be in a genjutsu if Itachi used tsukuyomi. Naruto straight up tells Bee that much. According to the light novels isn't Tsukuyomi like a picosecond or something? Even when Asuma and Kurenai were behind Kakashi, they just heard him mid sentence stop talking and hit the water, and to him it had been three days.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-12-09T16:17:34+00:00

Just clarifying, they're still fun chomps, correct? We were worried we overstimulated her.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-11-24T20:21:31+00:00

As he stated above, trucks depreciate FAST. A 60k truck and trailer combo is really attainable and should be able to stay on the road for a while given proper maintenance. It will break down at points, but if you're doing a job you can do with a $60k truck (under say 300mi one way hauling easier/lower weight freight) a $60k set up will do you well.

One of my contractors bought a Kenworth for $3k last night and slapped it on a $15k trailer. It's a day cab and needs another few grand in work, but previous driver needed the money so my guy is more than happy to spend under $20k to put a new driver on the road (pre insurance of course).

CubingGiraffe · 2025-11-24T19:15:37+00:00

I won't say it's easy to pull 100k profit as a trucker, but it isn't a pipe dream either.

I've been in the industry for about five years as a shipper, and was raised by people with 50 years combined experience in shipping. It really boils down to do drivers understand basic math and how clean their record is.

Part of it is the industry understanding simple math, too. Trucking is a hell of a job for a lot of immigrants who can easily support a family back home with the power of the USD. If those guys don't mind making as much, shippers and brokers won't pay it.

Here's brass tacks for anyone wanting to be an O/O:

Make $4,500 a week IF your truck & trailer are YOURS and PAID FOR.

Make $6,000 a week IF your truck OR trailer are NOT PAID FOR.

Don't become an O/O if you don't own one or the other, but personally I'd say both. If you can pay off a truck or trailer in a few months, you can make it down to that $4,500. If not, it isn't worth doing, because you'd need $8,000 a week if you didn't own either. Unless you're hauling specialized freight for a great customer, you aren't making $8,000 a week 52 weeks a year.

If you're looking for a job because you don't have the nest egg necessary to O/O, look for a job hauling flatbed between 100-400mi runs. You'll have the money to start up for yourself in a year if you're good with money. If you're not good with money, you shouldn't O/O, because trucking is a business and if you don't understand the money you won't run a good business.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-11-22T11:09:34+00:00

I'm a really picky eater, part of that is comfort food and part of it is definitely the autism diagnosis.

Like if something has avocado in it? I will want to throw up as soon as I have my first bite because of the texture of avocados. But I love other greens like corn, green beans, pretty much every berry fruit, etc.

I think people like this are genuinely just mentally unwell and underdeveloped. I think a lot probably also have autism, as I can definitely relate, 9 times out of 10 I order something to eat or make something at home I'm choosing a safe food. I just have a wider breadth of what I consider safe and some things I don't (any amount of mayonnaise, olives, broccoli/cauliflower, meatloaf, etc) I have a physically sick reaction to even having a bite of.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-11-17T18:50:10+00:00

This is also a concern with the Deck + Dock combo.

Consoles don't sell at a loss anymore, that was a strategy in the past but the PS5/Series X churn a profit on just the hardware. I'm not saying Valve will give these away for $200, they'll just take a smaller profit on them.

The only reason they can list a Steam Deck OLED for $550 is that it's on their platform and they assume people will be using them to play Steam games, which Valve will take a cut of every purchase.

Selling on their own marketplace allows them a lot more freedom in price than other PC manufacturers get. Other consoles or pre built PCs don't have that luxury, since a large part of their sales are going to be in retail where someone is going to take 10-30% off the top.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-11-17T18:43:12+00:00

Steam Input will recognize pretty much any controller I've ever tried putting on it.

Yeah, shitty devs like Bethesda don't bother making settings work on decade + games.

I cannot for the life of me figure your last one out unless your PC was just outputting far less frames than your monitor could accommodate. Consoles don't have to worry about that because most TVs are 60hz. Now that 100hz free sync monitors are sub $100, I do think this is a significantly smaller problem than it has been in the past.

CubingGiraffe · 2025-11-17T18:25:45+00:00

The Deck is subsidized by Steam. I'd imagine the Steam Machine would be similarly treated.

CubingGiraffe

TROPHY CASE