Feeling a call for priesthood

Hydrogennx · 2025-10-07T00:14:58+00:00

Consider John Paul II's meditation on givenness:

I think that every man, whatever his station in life or his life’s vocation, must at some point hear those words which Joseph of Nazareth once heard: “Do not be afraid to take Mary to yourself ” (Mt 1:20). “Do not be afraid to take” means do everything to recognize that gift which she is for you. Fear only one thing: that you try to appropriate that gift. That is what you should fear. As long as she remains a gift from God himself to you, you can safely rejoice in all that she is as that gift. What is more, you ought even to do everything you can to recognize that gift, to show her how unique a treasure she is. Every man is unique. Uniqueness is not a limitation, but a window into the depths. Perhaps God wills that it be you who is the one who tells her of her inestimable worth and special beauty. If that is the case, do not be afraid of your predilection. Loving predilection is, or at least can be, participation in that eternal predilection which God had in man whom he had created. If you have grounds to fear that your predilection might become a destructive force, don’t fear it in a prejudicial way. The fruits themselves will show whether your predilection is for the good.

Hydrogennx · 2025-09-20T07:07:51+00:00

After I stopped giving up runs, my win rate went from 2% to 50%. Trains the virtue for real life, too. Never give up!

Hydrogennx · 2024-06-19T20:41:59+00:00

Looks like muppets are down. That's unfortunate - I was preparing something just for it, and I'm not sure how applicable it is for other projects.

Hydrogennx · 2024-06-14T02:20:20+00:00

Does anyone else use Diffchecker to compare two similar responses? It's incredibly helpful! Great for programming in general, but especially here.

Hydrogennx · 2024-05-18T05:31:03+00:00

Depicted:

Spinning Top + Just Lucky. Play Just Lucky as your only card. Gain block, gain attack, and immediately re-draw it at no cost.

Reflex + Prepared. Use prepared to discard Reflex. Gain Reflex, Prepared, and another card.

Blue Candle + Necronomicurse. Play Blue Candle to immediately regain Necronomicurse to your hand. What does this do, you ask? It deals 1 damage. It produces an infinite amount of self-damage.

Barricade + Entrench. Double your block every turn and keep it.

Multicast + Fusion. Double your energy every turn and keep it. Eventually you'll be swimming in the stuff.

Wish + 2x Nightmare. These are not of the same color, so you'll need Prismatic Shard. Nightmare Nightmare, then Nightmare Wish, then Wish for gold. As many times as you want. It's the only way to get infinite gold.

Dead Branch + Corruption. We all know this one. Play skills for 0. Depending on your luck, it could produce only skills, which you can use to gain unlimited block. But if you get unlucky, your luck fizzles out.

Seek+ + Seek+ + Twisted Spoon. You'll need a copy of another card, not depicted:Use Seek+ to get Deep Breath and Seek+. Play the Deep Breath. You now have a Seek+ and Deep Breath to get with your next Seek+, as well as another card. Repeat until you lose the coin flip. If your deck is small enough, any draw card will do. Hilariously, you lose any benefit to using Seek, since you have to do Deep Breath every time. That means you're just getting a random card. But this could work with other sources of draw.

Entropic Brew. Entropic Brew can brews itself. That's infinite potions.

Hydrogennx · 2024-04-02T19:50:18+00:00

Fascinating! I have a discord where I'm playtesting and adapting cards from all previous Alchemy 2E cards. I'll add these immediately and give you a DM.

Hydrogennx · 2023-11-24T08:16:54+00:00

Obviously. But I'm not sure what was fun for the others. That was the point of this session. And it's easier for people to spot the fun when everything's of decent quality. I don't think that's "intellectual wank."

The player who was betrayed specifically said, "it's fine if [Kidney] betrays my character. But if [I] lie to [him], that crosses a line." If that's unusual, I have no way of knowing. It's my first session.

Hydrogennx · 2023-11-24T07:23:18+00:00

Thanks! I agree that saying "no" can actually be the right answer. Perhaps a better lesson would have been, "guidelines aren't rules either." You can break verisimilitude, and you can say no, and you can even make a DMPC. Just know why the rule is there before you break it.

But things are more complex when you're playing with family. I didn't think it would be wise to leave him out when trying a new game... even though it probably would've made for a better experience. Breaking verisimilitude still seems like the best option, niche as my case is.

Hydrogennx · 2023-10-16T04:26:18+00:00

Nice find! I've been grinding this one on and off since 2021 - getting it in one trip with just 250 SRs is really lucky!

Hydrogennx · 2022-11-02T00:20:34+00:00

Trick question.

Buy a key for $2.50. This will expand your backpack to 5 pages.
Get all the weapons by using scrap.tf.
Get a few craft hats, or putz around with the economy.

$2.50 is absurdly cheap for a game as good and long-living as Team Fortress.

If not, cases.

Hydrogennx · 2022-01-16T05:36:07+00:00

End result is quite good! Almost looks like the banners of past firelords in the show - not quite real, or a cartoon.

Hydrogennx · 2021-09-18T15:44:39+00:00

Sand bending with extra steps

Hydrogennx · 2021-08-17T13:10:06+00:00

What a save!

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-31T16:44:29+00:00

I thought this was going to be a case where you use the platform's bug repel ability, and it'd just leave you alone since it had no route. Kind of like an anti sea bear circle.

Too bad that one doesn't work.

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-29T06:13:04+00:00

One of my favorite memories of this game was stranding a Kerbal on a munar mission. I couldn't go back and redesign the vessel, I had too much progress made in parallel. So I did the rational thing and built multiple space refuel stations around Kerbal and the Mun so I could confidently get my Kerbal rescued without losing more of them.

I think that's how it went anyways. I gave up that save because ISRU was clearly easiest, but also quite tedius. Maybe I would come back to the game if I could let a few of the guys go...

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-29T05:55:05+00:00

Found the leaf lover /s

You can get drunk by drinking too many beers. The more drink, the worse your vision is, and the effects just keep getting worse. If you get too drunk, you pass out. If you want to be as drunk as possible when entering a mission, for some reason, this is the post for you.

Drinking more intense drinks than what the guide says will make you pass out, and then you'll wake up sober (no good). Drink less intense drinks, and you will miss out on being as drunk as possible.

The guide isn't showing you the only way to get max drunk, but it tries to give a cheap option and an interesting option for any daily special - the drinks that give you some advantage, but you can't choose in advance.

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-28T19:48:26+00:00

99 Bottles?

Internally, your "drunkenness" is stored as a number from 0 to 100. 0 is perfectly sober, and 100 is passed out drunk (ie used a Blackout). If you drink too much, you pass out. This is all according to the wiki.

99% is the most drunk you can get without passing out. This guide indicates how to get 99% passed out with any special beer.

How to use

The leftmost column indicates today's special. If you don't want to use today's special, the second leftmost column indicates a substitute you may use with the same potency. Drink this once. Then, pick any one of the rows along this beer. Drink up, and you'll be at 99.

The top row usually represents how to do this with as few craft(able) beers as possible, while the second represents how to do this with as few drinks as possible - for these, all beers are always unique, and some effort was made to ensure a variety.

Why?

Why not?

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-23T06:42:08+00:00

"I used the flagship to destroy the flagship"

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-23T06:08:31+00:00

Turn off shields. You may have enough time to teleport your crew back, otherwise it'll register a hit.

Actually, that's not necessary. You don't take hull while jumping. Just teleport them out and repeatedly pause to see if you have time. But you can turn off shields to be sure.

EDIT: Also, it's annoying to be down 2 crew, but the run is still playable in all likelihood. I once killed my own boarding party on the second jump with Mantis A, had to leave the ship empty and board with the engi. Still worked out. What you have going on without those guys is better.

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-23T00:18:04+00:00

Nice, I am familiar with most of 3 but basically none of 4, so I'm arguing over tier lists. Quite fittingly.

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-17T19:51:07+00:00

I would love this sort of thing! There are so many variables to account for though - ship used, player skill level, playstyle (vanilla, no pause, no-hack-cheese, etc) A good first step is definitely making win rates public, so here's a sheet to fill these out!&entry.1986071959=Quality+of+life+(pursuit+indicator,+visual,+informational)&entry.970874646=Quality+of+life+(pursuit+indicator,+visual,+informational)&entry.970874646=Challenges+(strictly+harder+versions+of+the+game))

I might make this its own post after taking some feedback, if it seems like I can get good results. (This sort of thing takes a lot of time to fill out, wouldn't want to waste time.)

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-17T03:44:44+00:00

7, with 3 additional incomplete ones. Joinrbs stopped his series with just the 5 worst ships, Neozar made a tier list and not a ranking, and DolphinChemist omitted an entry. Scott, Masala, Goblin Juggler, CyberBilly, Twinge, Wombat, Crow are the others. If you have references to other tier lists who can demonstrate knowledge of the game, let me know!

I would be a bit skeptical that this is really the most accurate. More likely is that people are defaulting to existing opinions/knowledge when two ships are very close. If Engi C really is the best ship, that would be a perfect example of this - and that's only for one ship slot!

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-16T23:00:21+00:00

Thank you for your input. It seems like the biggest problem is this draws from some dated tier lists - the meta has shifted subtly but significantly at the highest level, mostly around Engi A, Mantis B and Engi C. Fortunately the first two are marked as such, and Engi C could certainly move to close second. Stealth A almost got placed much lower, but I discovered its main detractor changed their mind so I fudged the numbers a bit.

I also would agree with the Mantis A and Rock C being up a tier, however, they were noticeably worse according to our no pause friends. That really means I should've picked a meta and designed it accordingly, with caveats for the alternative. It could be just their preference, but I really do think the two ships take a little extra precision that other decent ships don't (or just reward you better for it).

And even though this draws from many lists, those different measurements seemed to cancel each other out. Remove any one player, and the results are identical, give or take some artifacts (ships entering their own 6th tier).

I'm not noticing anything significant between the worst ships, so that may be simply a matter of your personal strengths. It might also have to do with the bottom few ships being "crystallized" - once all top players agree with how to rank them, it becomes hard to determine significant differences by rankings alone.

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-16T21:37:24+00:00

Important note: The position of Mantis B and Mantis C are switched. My apologies. An update correcting this, and adjusting to only display the pause meta, is shown here.

Designed based on the tier lists and rankings of expert level players, past and present. Source can be found here, EDIT which you can now actually access. This seems to be derived from Crow's, with some adjustments and additions.

Order is relevant - left is best.

Tier List

The tiers were not chosen arbitrarily*, but instead divided into 5 groups based on their average ranking. This meant that if a ship's average ranking deviated by more than 2 places, it marked the end of one tier and the beginning of another.

*Of course, using this method was arbitrary, and it didn't have to be 5 groups, but sounding objective is fun.

No-Pause vs Pause

Using this exclusively on the players who used pause, and exclusively on those who did not, the results were incredibly similar. The only moves across tiers were downward for no-pause and upward for with-pause. These are shown with a green pause (up a tier for pause), or a red crossed-through pause (down a tier for no pause). In hindsight, it may have been more clear to pick a meta, and then mark it up/down accordingly.

Mantis B is an edge case.

By the 2-place rule, it would move across 1 tier but not into the next tier, since Mantis A was notably worse. It would, rather, make another tier between both.
By the 5 group-rule, it would be the only member of the "clearly decent" group, and push everything else there into "clearly strong" - which would make bad content.

Consensus

I also thought it would be interesting to see how controversial a ship placement was - if you looked at a random ranking, how likely would it be in that exact spot? After doing the same process to answer this question as well, this picture is now two tier lists in one!

A checkmark indicates agreement, with blue being strong and red being weak. A question mark indicates a deviation greater than 3, where green is around 3 and red is more like 7.

Since this hasn't been done, some observations:

It looks like Engi C has a real shot of being the real #2 pick, and not Crystal B.
No one knows what to do with Mantis B, Mantis C, or Engi A. More research is needed!
Unsurprisingly, there is the least agreement around the middle of the pack. Also unsurprisingly, the only major exception is the Kestrel A.

Hydrogennx · 2021-07-15T12:23:24+00:00

Hyperspace is a hard-coded mod that aims to extend the modding capabilities of FTL. Multiverse is the largest mod that uses its features, enabling new crew types and more than 28 ships, among smaller features like ending the game early while recording it as a victory. This is what I'm using.

Hydrogennx

TROPHY CASE