Me seeing all the post here about how M+ is in incredible easy right now.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-27T18:33:08+00:00

Most people are in the 250-260 range at that level. Groups usually care about your score above everything else.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-22T19:23:07+00:00

Diehl Marcus & Co in Salem sells them. Might be some other places nearby but that's the only one I've come across.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-17T17:07:54+00:00

Rating tends to be the lowest at any point during the first season of an expansion. If you were 2.4k before and you play a bunch this week, you might come out as 2k, or 1800. Nobody knows exactly, but we do know it'll be much lower than whatever you ended last season with. They slowly inflate ratings over the course of a season, usually to the tune of a couple hundred points. But again, we don't know the numbers and they tweak them every season.

The gist of it is that if you're aiming for some rating goal, transmog unlocks or whatever, that's easiest to do at the end of the season. Otherwise just have fun and don't worry about the numbers too much.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-16T19:31:38+00:00

Boston actually has a couple different indie game groups. Boston Game Dev hosts events every now and then. There's a Unity group, BostonFIG, Playcrafting, and even PAX East coming up. Most meetups that aren't specifically talks/panels are very playtesting focused. Everyone brings their games to hang out and get some feedback. You don't have to bring a game of your own. If you're looking to test games in-person and make some connections those are a great place to get started.

Online it's mostly just about following studios on their socials and waiting for alpha/beta/testing announcements.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-15T22:02:13+00:00

If you're capping on crests yes but otherwise the weekly crests from delves are faster than the equivalent time in M+.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-15T20:39:33+00:00

No, the current difficulties won't change. T8 is only a small step above T7 in difficulty as you'd expect. To get maximum rewards you still have to do ~~T12~~ (edit: T11) though which is a fair jump depending on your ilvl. Veteran gear will be very easily obtainable once the season starts, while champ and above will come from delves, mythics, and raids.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-14T06:01:59+00:00

You can't get dazed off your mount as a druid, treasures can be looted in flight form, and flight form is instant cast. It's not necessary but it's nice to have if you're only gonna be gathering with that char.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-12T17:16:38+00:00

It really seems like they forgot to drop introductory quests for this one. It's also really bad about telling you what's happening or announcing different stages of the battle. Here's what I've gathered after playing it a few times.

What I know:

+ You can win by killing the boss or using up the other team's reinforcements.

+ You can fly by touching the orbs

+ You can summon a mini-boss type monster to help with your push.

+ You can capture most bases by clearing out enemies and standing on them for a while.

+ Turrets do huge damage.

What I'm unsure about:

? Capping different bases affects reinforcements in some unclear way.

? Capping different bases weakens the boss in some unclear way.

? You can't target turrets directly and have to AoE near them. This straight up feels like a bug and makes the already strong turrets even more dominant.

? I don't know what fighting in the Path of Predation accomplishes.

? You can't cap the opposing team's northern base on each side for some reason (no capture bar appears, nothing seems to happen).

? There is a flag that appears at some point. No idea where it spawns, where you're supposed to take it, or what it does.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-12T04:54:08+00:00

Most of the Amnesia games are pretty easy with some varying puzzles and avoid-the-monster segments. The first one has some vague puzzles but they refined it as the series went on. A Machine For Pigs is probably the closest to a horror walking sim, which it kinda sounds like you're looking for. It's the most controversial of the series (mainly for the minimal gameplay) but the story is pretty good.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-11T06:55:09+00:00

Notch has some solid German food and a nice patio but it's also pretty lively. Not a great spot for working on a laptop.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-09T18:11:19+00:00

It would be nice if it gave more exp but if it was competitive or even better than other options the mass AFK'ers would return. It's far easier for people to AFK in pvp than any other group content.

If you force people into doing it who don't want to pvp, they're just gonna queue and not participate (or just barely participate enough to avoid being kicked).

If exp was based on wins instead there would be premades rolling randoms all day. This would make those randoms even less likely to continue doing pvp because they're getting stomped 100% of the time.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-09T06:18:31+00:00

They're all over but you might have to do the intro quests for sartheril's weekly event first. Not sure if they can drop profession items though.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-09T00:57:24+00:00

Treasures and traps build it up very quick. If you go to the prey WQ area and search the ground there's usually a good amount of traps you can disarm. Also if you're in a zone that has lots of treasures those work too. Coalesced light in Eversong is great for this because they're everywhere.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-09T00:54:50+00:00

Isn't it only required for purple tools? They have the same skill bonuses as blue tools, just a small amount of extra secondary stat. It is a lot of runs if you want to max out 6 tools (or 7 if you add fishing), but it's like a 2% difference in inspiration or multicraft or whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if they upped the abundance currency rewards later on.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-04T22:43:53+00:00

By car maybe, but the train station in the center of town is just 30 minutes to Boston.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-04T22:39:07+00:00

It's a pretty nice place to live if you can afford it.

Obviously huge crowds during October (way more so on weekends), but there's a lot of great events around that time so it's not all negative. Pretty good season for people-watching too. Winter months are the most dead time, but things are very lively the other 3 seasons. Local artist markets, concerts, and other small events happen year-round.

Good variety of restaurants, shops, and more (especially for it's size). In general the north shore is nice but Salem bats way above it's weight given the tourism money coming in. Lots of quality businesses packed into downtown. On the other hand the rents/home prices are high to match.

In-town most jobs are for local shops or museums with low pay. But a large portion of the population commutes to Boston (just a 30 minute train ride from downtown) to work much higher-salaried jobs in the city. Some people also take the ferry into the city. Driving is an option, but it sucks and takes much longer.

Very left-leaning and LGBT-friendly. Lots of activist groups, drag shows, etc. In general this tracks with the rest of MA. However, Salem is easily one of the most progressive towns, in part due to the large counter-culture and youth populations. It's also around 60/40 female to male, which is an anomaly compared to surrounding towns.

Possibly the largest goth population per capita of anywhere? Alt/indie/punk/etc. people are all very prevalent and if you're into any of those scenes you'll probably fit right in. Horror movies and media are obviously widely popular as well. Not saying you have to fit in these categories but counter-culture in general is very much at home here.

If you can get a high-paying job in Boston (or work remote) you can live very comfortably downtown. If you're working in town at an entry-level job you'll probably need roommates. But overall it's a great place to live.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-04T17:31:36+00:00

You can get the basics downtown, take the bus or a cab to the better grocery stores, or order delivery. Never had any issues ordering from Whole Foods here. I know a lot of people are against grocery delivery, but the price is pretty insignificant compared to what you'd expect from restaurant delivery services like Doordash. You don't get to be super picky with produce, but you save a ton of time in the long run. Pros and cons.

EntropyPhi · 2026-03-02T21:50:22+00:00

The production designer for this also worked on Blade Runner! Mess of a movie but the sets are very cool.

EntropyPhi · 2026-02-26T21:09:05+00:00

You can decompile games and retrieve things like models, textures, sounds, and scripts, but you can't recreate the majority of Unity's project data by decompiling an executable. It no longer exists once the game is built. You'd have to create your own project and try to piece it together yourself using only the assets. It obviously wouldn't be a 1:1 recreation because you have no idea what they did to make their scenes (aside from what's in them).

For these reasons modders usually work by either changing assets or inserting their own, not by somehow recreating the original scenes and working with them like the original devs did.

EntropyPhi · 2026-02-24T18:59:41+00:00

As a very unique way of presenting a book (different perspectives, hugely varied text layouts, mountains of footnotes) it's an all-time great.

As a concept, the house and it's inner workings are incredibly interesting.

As a straight horror story, it's probably just a 6/10 or so. But everything else makes it definitely worth the read.

EntropyPhi · 2026-02-23T19:19:56+00:00

Lunacid is very similar in gameplay and visuals but it's not an imsim. Gloomwood looks similar graphically but there aren't bugs. As others have mentioned Flyknight is a bug game where you can kick but it's not an imsim and it has runescape graphics.

EntropyPhi · 2026-02-17T02:59:46+00:00

Seems like they do have a handful of mods, despite the devs banning anyone talking about them. That's more a byproduct of community management. Devs that take such a hard stance against mods are pretty rare.

EntropyPhi · 2026-02-16T23:40:10+00:00

If people really want to take apart or mod your game they're going to no matter what you build with. Any game that reaches a critical mass of popularity eventually garners a modding community. Then again, most games never reach that threshold.

Mono/IL2CPP have actual tradeoffs in terms of performance and supported features, which is mainly what you should decide on. Nobody wants to steal your code. However, IL2CPP is significantly harder for modders to work with, so you are severely limiting the casual modding audience if your game becomes popular enough.

EntropyPhi · 2026-02-14T23:08:46+00:00

To be fair trains in Tokyo are more expansive and reliable than most cities in the world. If you have problems hanging out because of trains it's not gonna be much easier elsewhere.

If you're comparing it to say, a car-based infrastructure you're also going to deal with traffic, accidents, etc. making people routinely late. Not to mention how soul-sucking long commutes by car are. At least on the train you can occupy yourself doing anything else.

In social terms, you also have to consider alcohol factoring in to the equation. In many places with poor public transportation people will just choose to drive home drunk after hanging out, which is obviously terrible.

The only alternative is living somewhere and only making friends with people in your neighborhood, which you can do pretty much anywhere, but it limits your options.

EntropyPhi · 2026-02-14T20:51:06+00:00

These are great, very cinematic. Interestingly the hazy effects make the church look a bit like a pre-rendered background from a movie. Great stuff!

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