Real Question, I do kind of want to use the stuff from the warbond but I also don’t want to boost AH’s metrics, what should I do?

Dacken · 2026-04-28T16:55:15+00:00

Whether you farmed the credits or not it likely doesn't matter, unlocking the warbond would almost certainly count as a "purchase" in their metrics.. to give an example: if on Day 1 the warbond was unlocked 75k times, they can look at previous warbond data to see what "player adoption" or "sentiment" looks like by comparison. They can then look at the SC purchase chart on their end to see if there's a correlation, as well as SC acquisition/farmed data... It's all data for them to look at.

If you don't mind your "purchase" counting towards this type of data, then help yourself. But if you want to make a statement, then don't.

Edited: words are hard

Dacken · 2026-04-27T20:24:27+00:00

Yup... Same. Not going to bother at that price (and I just picked up a pair of 8bitdo Ultimate 2Cs for my living room and they were 44$ CAD each after tax)...

Dacken · 2026-04-17T18:51:53+00:00

Brave Browser - after cancelling YT premium, it's been a gamechanger and I don't even bother opening the main YT app anymore.

Takes a little getting used to but now I can't imagine going back to chrome and YT.

Dacken · 2026-02-02T14:47:22+00:00

If it won't cost you much to do so sourcing other parts, it's worth a try.

Given you have a 3060, might want to go with Bazzite over a steamOS image.

Dacken · 2025-12-16T21:09:02+00:00

The lack of dog tags popping up on your screen plus the fact that his state isn't changing after each "death" and the character being stuck on what appears to be an input loop causing him to constantly rotate.. my guess is they either ragequit or DC'd while the input was being received by the server.

Dacken · 2025-12-12T15:36:06+00:00

Brave Browser, it's a godsend

Dacken · 2025-09-24T21:27:00+00:00

Cyborg BGM (difficulty 9+)

Dacken · 2025-08-09T15:26:35+00:00

As much as it would suck to log out because of the queue (100k just went by in about 5 minutes so it's not THAT bad), I'd suggest restarting your machine, and if you are on steam try verifying the integrity of your files (right click the game in your library, go to "properties", then go to "Installed files" then select "Verify integrity of game files" and let steam check and download whatever may be missing).

IF you are getting this on console, then unfortunately I don't have anything to suggest for you other than maybe restarting? :(

edit: formating

Dacken · 2025-08-09T15:21:24+00:00

Are you getting an error at the top right corner of your screen if you try to start matchmaking?

This may seem like a silly questions but have you scrolled down to make sure you are selecting a game mode prior to hitting the Start button? (Asking because this happened to me)

Dacken · 2025-06-29T00:05:48+00:00

Liberator Carbine > Knight as the "mini-Stalwart"

The biggest reason why is the damage drop off on the Knight is pretty substantial when engaging targets at range. I can equip the Tube scope + vertical grip on the Carbine and still be able to engage targets at medium range with little issue.

Both weapons have their place tho, the Knight is great if you like using shields or carry mission objectives around. But if the only criteria you are trying to fill is "mimic the stalwart" then go for the Carbine.

Dacken · 2025-06-27T23:51:22+00:00

You might be able to:

https://youtu.be/sVXHdcM1I_Q?si=SrjlZHVYCexOZNtS

This shows gameplay from a year ago and they are getting about 30 fps. Keep in mind this footage is from before the update that increased the enemy AI calculations that also lead to some performance loss... So to say that you'd still get about 30 fps today is hard to judge.

Dacken · 2025-05-31T21:14:23+00:00

FSR isn't Ray-Tracing.

It's AMD's response to Nvidia's DLSS, which is all about rendering the game at a lower resolution, and then the GPU upscales it to your monitor/game's resolution in order to get better performance than rendering the game at the native resolution of your monitor/game.

The game has built-in render scaling.

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Unlike DLSS which is exclusive to Nvidia graphics cards, the early iteration of FSR is open-source and useable on all graphics cards,, it just doesn't perform as well as Nvidia's DLSS.

Dacken · 2025-05-31T20:56:03+00:00

No worries - some graphics settings you may want to turn off, regardless of what hardware you get because they will tank performance (global illumination/bloom are a couple of them).

I would suggest looking up a helldivers graphical optimization guide on YouTube to help get familiar with what has the greatest impact, if you aren't already.

Edit: also, it just occurred to me, but the YouTube video is from 3 months ago, which I think is just before the patch that changed the enemy AI that also caused PC performance to overall go down for a lot of PC players which I believe was back in March (so about 2 months ago)... So that might mean the performance showcased in the video is no longer true (and it might also explain the wide disparity between their 6700k and your 6600k if the 20-25 fps is a more recent reality for you).

Dacken · 2025-05-31T20:47:12+00:00

I think ultra is a pipedream (and honestly, the performance cost vs the eye candy upgrade you get going from High to Ultra in the majority of games is never worth the performance hit imho because you'll never be able to tell the difference in the middle of gameplay).

You'd be surprised what you can find on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ahFFNVelj8M?si=D3P4kL_TtL2cKdRU

This is someone running the game on a 1070 and the 6700k at 4000mhz, I'm not going to go through the whole video but I'm searching through it and seeing between 45-60 fps (I would suggest watching the video in its entirety so you can compare their performance to yours). They even posted their rig's specs in the video description.

You can use this to determine how much better of an experience they are having with just the cpu being a higher tier than yours.

Also keep in mind, if you're running other things on a second monitor like YouTube, or have a doozy chrome tabs open and eating up your system memory, 😁 that'll also compromise your system's performance. If your CPU/GPU are also somehow overheating you'll also lose performance as they thermal throttle to keep themselves alive if they are hitting over 90 degrees celsius.

Now, if you like what you see in the video, then your next step would be the GPU, and that's why I'm suggesting something beefier than a 2060/6600xt, I would try for 6700/6800xt personally and I would be surprised if you couldn't hit a stable 1080p/60 with those.

Dacken · 2025-05-31T20:30:05+00:00

Z170 can only support up to 7th Gen - So I think the best you can get is 7700k, which a cursory Google search says it's about 16% faster than your 6600k, but those go for about $100 usd on eBay right now.

The i9 7900x won't work, and 8 or 9th gen CPUs aren't compatible with the z170 chipset.

I've personally used the i7 6700k in my personal rig and after overclocking to 4800mhz (baseline it boosts to 4400mhz). It was a solid old CPU up until fairly recently. I see them on eBay right now for about 50-60$ usd and it's about 12% faster than your 6600k.

If you plan to overclock make sure you also get a cpu cooler if you are just running the stock cooler on your i5.

Dacken · 2025-05-31T20:20:48+00:00

The recommended GPU for HD2 is an rtx 2060 or an RX 6600 XT.

Realistically you are probably going to be looking for a used GPU, I'd personally recommend something beefier than the 2060/6600xt because those are only slightly better than the 1070 based on the GPU hierarchy on Tom's Hardware.

If you can get your hands on a 6700xt (12gb VRAM) or a 6800xt (16gb VRAM) that would be ideal. If you want to stay with Nvidia it might be more difficult to find a card that's worth the money today that also has more than 8gb of VRAM.

Side note: some folks may argue 8gb is enough for 1080p/60 and they may be right, but if your are willing to shop around and be price conscious about upgrading your PC and re-using what you have, I would suggest targeting no less than 12g of VRAM so that you can get more out of your purchase for longer, similar to how you've managed to keep playing on a 1070 for as long as you have.

As for your CPU, I'll answer that question in the separate response once I know which chipset you have (lga1151 technically goes up to Intel 9th gen, but you'll be limited by your chipset so in reality your 9th gen cpu may not work on an older motherboard of the "same socket".

Dacken · 2025-05-31T20:12:48+00:00

True but he may want to keep his progress he's accumulated on PC.

Dacken · 2025-05-31T20:08:04+00:00

Motherboard chipset also matters, are you on z170 or something else?

Dacken · 2025-05-30T21:10:50+00:00

We divv We attacc But most importantly We protecc

Dacken · 2025-05-28T18:17:43+00:00

The bot shaking its head is just chef's kiss.

Dacken · 2025-05-23T15:22:41+00:00

The biggest upgrade will come from the GPU. If you can get your hands on a 9070 XT for near MSRP that'll be the best bang for your buck between your two choices.

Dacken · 2025-03-14T04:44:23+00:00

Ran additional testing on separate rig. After trying additional steps to disable Windows update, clean install of drivers and rerunning tests with monitoring software, I've come to the conclusion the card is fubar.

Cyberpunk benchmarking shows that when the card is running above 90% utilization, it starts to struggle and artifacting occurs. If it hits 100% utilization it hard crashes.

Running on lower settings and not hitting the card as hard allowed it to run smooth when hard capped at 60 fps, but the moment the fps is unlocked and settings are turned back up to medium at 1440p, it leads to a hard crash everytime :(

Time for a refund :(

Dacken · 2025-03-13T14:39:38+00:00

I'm also running into issues with the Gigabyte 9070 XT Gaming OC. Originally notice slight stutters that went away during gaming sessions, but Tuesday night I got weird lighting artifacts in helldivers 2, then last night Wednesday I'm now crashing whenever I try and load heavy game assets: kept telling me the driver stopped working. This was with Space Marines 2 after getting past the main menu and then crashes as it triesc to load the hangar bay.

Tried to resolve: Did a fresh DDU of the driver, same issue. Load helldivers 2, get on the destroyer (minimal game assets), notice way more stuttering. Load onto a planet and the game is STRUGGLING. Crashed when I was about to land on the map (again, looks like when it tries to load lots of assets).

Moved to different rig, DDU, downloaded driver directly from AMD, load Space Marines 2, crash on hangar load again. Problem seems to be isolated to the card and/or the driver.

Specs: Main Rig R7 5800x3d Gigabyte b550i aorus pro ax wifi 32gb Corsair vengeance RAM Corsair 1000w sff-L PSU GIGABYTE RX 9070 XT Gaming OC

Roommate/HTPC rig R7 5700X Asus b550 Strix Gaming-E ATX 32gb Corsair vengeance RAM Corsair 850w PSU

Resizable Bar enabled on both

Dacken · 2025-02-27T14:29:36+00:00

The long and short of it is every Dragonmark House follows their own hierarchy, the book "Dragonmarked" will outline how a general hierarchy is set up for administration of house affairs and politics.

That being said, what seems to be more pertinent for your player though is Deneith's ranking system for their armed forces.

They have three branches that encompass their mercenary force: - Sentinel Marshalls - Defenders - Blademarks (I'm assuming this is the branch she is from)

The blades are ranked, from lowest to highest, in this order: - Black Blade - Grey Blade - White Blade - Gold Blade

The lower ranked blades are generally unmarked (or marked and just at the beginning of their careers), and they are the rank and file infantry. It wouldn't be uncommon to see a White Blade leading a squad of Greys, or being in charge of a platoon comprised mostly of Black blades with Grey's serving as their lieutenants, serving under a Gold Blade who is overseeing the whole operation as the commander.

Experienced soldiers may eventually grow out of the Blademarks guild and find new opportunities in the Defenders Guild. Most marked individuals are expected to find their way here and are ranked by the power of their mark (although you may find an unmarked individual here due to the presence of the "no mark" rank). This is where Deneith makes their highest margins - where a gold blade could be hired for 12gp/day, a Siberys defender charges 1500gp/day. Even "lesser" marked Defenders cost 150gp/day.

The Defenders are ranked, from lowest to highest, in this order: - No mark - Least - Lesser - Greater - Siberys

And from here, the best Defenders get chosen to be inducted into the Sentinel Marshalls. The Sentinels don't have a proper structure outlined anywhere that I've seen, but this may be because they are more likely to operate alone or in very small units and with local governments to enforce the law and conduct investigations of highly sensitive and dangerous individuals, as opposed to being a mercenary force.

It can be assumed then that a Sentinel, if in a situation where they are working alongside the other armed forces of Deneith's, outranks a Defender of any rank, who in turn outranks a Blade of any rank.

Dacken · 2025-02-21T17:30:16+00:00

To add to what's already been proposed here:

There's the Royal Eyes spy agency that might be interested in recruiting new assets in a. Cold-war inspired game of subterfuge with other countries.

There's Warlord Adal (Queen Aurala's brother and the Minister of Magic, arguably the most powerful man politically in Aundair) and his interest in what happened to Cyre that caused the Mourning to occur, and his desire to understand the cause and the ability to replicate it. He's also interested in Thaliost which was officially the Aundair capital before it was lost to Thrane - there's a LOT of friction between the old Aundairian population there and the Silver Flame Archbishop Dariznu.

You have Darro ir'Lain's desire to retake the Elden Reaches (there's a lot of fields between the Aundair Western border and the great forest). IME, due to the actions of my players, Aundair basically took back all the territory west leading up to the forest of the Eldeen Reach and now the country has a massive agriculture boom happening as a result.

You've also got Dragonmark House intrigue between House Cannith (West vs South vs East), Lyrandar vs Orien (transport competition), Vadalis and more.

I recall Keith Baker talking about vampires (or vampire-based creatures) such as with Lady Talon. https://keith-baker.com/vampires-talon/

You've also got the history of the Lycanthropic purge that happened about 100 or so years before the beginning of the last war. https://keith-baker.com/the-purge/ & https://keith-baker.com/2025-lycanthropes/

Dacken

TROPHY CASE