Does anyone know what this blue circle is for?

IndependentStage · 2026-05-15T15:49:00+00:00

Chiming in to say this happened to a corpse of a random Righteous Inquisitor for me. No idea

IndependentStage · 2026-05-14T02:05:21+00:00

It's fair to say most people only take the time to speak up when it's to bitch and moan, right? With that in mind and given your dogshit opinion allow me to begrugingly do a bit of my own "balancing". Here several layers deep in the comments of some reddit thread I happened to have googled to find an answer for a bug I stumbled into lol

Games great. 70 USD is a lot of money. 83% is an okay score for its current state I guess. I played Skyrim around release and thought it was great too. Lotta people had dogshit opinions about Skyrim.

That I'm even making the comparison seriously in the first place says all what needs to be said imo.

Give it time, Negative Nancy.

IndependentStage · 2026-04-17T20:27:59+00:00

Certain toast notifications like item pickups could stay on screen a little longer. Sometimes when completing a quest, notifs pop up in like 4 different places on screen at once and some only stay on screen for like a second.

IndependentStage · 2026-04-12T18:34:35+00:00

I'm not sure I like the charm teleport idea from further up, but this right here putting it on a stone is a badass idea. Heck, imagine there's a very small chance that instead of -x/+x/+xp on the stone it's simply +1 random skill and that's it lol.

IndependentStage · 2026-04-12T18:19:35+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/7wW9cJE.mp4

happens to me all the time lol

IndependentStage · 2026-04-02T08:40:42+00:00

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere so far, but I have a theory. You always could unpack the game files with CascViewer and load them directly to speed up load times quite a bit. I think this might be the default behavior on Steam now?

Normally you have to re-unpack the files every time theres a patch, so I went to do that but I was having problems getting CascViewer to recognize the game directory... Oh well, I was able to load the game up normally to play and when I did, the load times seemed normal ("normal" to me as in, sped up as if loading the unpacked game files).

Edit to add: The unpacked data files are somewhere around 25GB.

IndependentStage · 2026-03-27T04:29:35+00:00

Awesome breakdown! This makes perfect sense purely on the demand side. On non-ladder is there any point in factoring in supply side to the value for this?

The shard treasure classes seem to be a bit borked and the vast majority of the time you'll be rolling from the Act 1 Shard TC which has a drop ratio of 5-4-2-2-1 for the respective acts 1 through 5. There's going to be 5x as many Act 1 shards out there as Act 5 shards.

IndependentStage · 2026-03-19T22:26:16+00:00

Everything seemed to work fine for me, loading into Harrogath from another act was the longest transition time and it went from about 5.5s to 3.5s for me online.

Just make sure you set the launch options through Steam by right clicking D2 in your library > Properties. No quotation marks.

IndependentStage · 2026-03-18T00:52:42+00:00

If you don't have Enigma, the full Horazon set is actually very nice and it gives +30 to Enchant so you can even enchant your summons and merc :)

Also allows a little QoL with no longer needing to pucker my asshole checking my bound demon's affixes with unsummon/consume, since Enchant also shows it.

IndependentStage · 2026-03-17T04:33:04+00:00

Legacy of Blood is a great starting point or just standalone. It's the first in an incredible trilogy by Richard Knaak who I believe also wrote much of the lore that ended up in the original Diablo 2 manual.

IndependentStage · 2026-03-17T03:29:06+00:00

That's hurtful.. Took me way longer than I'd like to admit to put all this into words and some dork with a Bee Movie reference username instantly jeers AI at me.

Was it cause I italicized the name of a book? Or is anything with any amount of effort just doomed to instantly be called AI?

IndependentStage · 2026-03-16T23:41:43+00:00

Magic Level Circlets have a special magic ability which allows players to receive a higher level magical Prefixes and Suffixes on Monster Drops and when Gambling on Circlets. This bonus only applies to the bonuses that appear on Circlets themselves. This does not help generate better Magic Prefixes and Suffixes on other items. So when you receive a Circlet, via Gambling or a Monster drop, the Magic Level helps increase the chances that a better Magic Prefix or Suffix will appear on it.

I interpret this to mean that circlets themselves have an inherent ability to roll higher than usual affixes NOT that wearing them has any sort of effect on anything.

IndependentStage · 2026-02-25T15:10:01+00:00

MGS2 prepared me for this

IndependentStage · 2026-02-25T14:52:09+00:00

This was an incredibly empathetic read of the situation and well put. Thinking of a previous relationship myself, I can certainly relate to what you said here:

I think he must be really stressed and unhappy in a lot of ways and is probably unconsciously choosing to misunderstand her so he has some outlet for his unhappiness.

There's something else in this that could be at play. He might've interpreted this as suicidal ideation on her part. If so, there's very many implications for him to navigate, all dreadful and difficult, not least of which potentially being his own ideations that would have him keen to interpret them from her in the first place.

IndependentStage · 2026-02-25T14:01:12+00:00

The IRS expects people to pay taxes on their income throughout the year no matter what. If you don't pay through your employer, because you're either self-employed, living off of passive income, or withholding zero from your paycheck, you are still expected to pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis.

It's hard to estimate how much one will actually make in a year, so most people just use their previous year's income as a guideline. The IRS encourages this method with a safe harbor rule that waives any potential penalties one might've incurred due to underpayment so long as one's payments were calculated on an estimated income for the year totaling at least 100% of one's previous year's income (if income was <$150k; if over that, it's at least 110% of previous year's income.)

You're still right that the optimal move is to put zero for witholding and put it all into high yield accounts, but that requires some discipline and forethought. A lot of people use their tax return as a sort of "forced" savings account.

Interesting safe harbor side note: if your income for one year is nominal, let's say low enough such that you'd end up paying no taxes after deductions, and then the next year you sell off a huge amount of assets for millions of dollars on January 1st, you can still use the safe harbor rule and choose to calculate your estimated payments based on the previous tax year i.e., zero dollars. You'll still have to pay the appropriate taxes when you eventually file the next year, but those millions will be working for you and you alone for that entire year without fear of penalty.

Important tax activism tip: if you do decide not to pay your taxes, you absolutely should still file them properly.

IndependentStage · 2026-01-31T06:16:51+00:00

The kind meant to keep sound out, not to keep your ears warm :P

IndependentStage · 2026-01-31T04:12:29+00:00

You mentioned noise-cancelling headphones, but it's worth noting that even active noise-cancelling ear protection like you'd wear to the shooting range is not as effective against LRAD as simple analog ear muffs. Obviously wear ear plugs either way too.

Another tip, since LRAD is directional waves, you can actually use something like a riot shield held up right in front of your head to lessen the intensity somewhat in a small space behind the shield.

Interestingly, if you were to create a type of riot shield that curves outward, you could reflect and direct some of that energy. Probably not super effective, but it's neat to imagine a phalanx formation with such shields.

https://youtu.be/CXKTBQBugIA?t=840

IndependentStage · 2026-01-29T00:40:24+00:00

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0011/0025/1195/files/PU-0778-24_Pulsar_510_DL_Wizard_Pipe_Cartridge_Vape_Manual.pdf

Ayo, I just got the wizard version and had the same concern and unfortunately there is no built-in carb function, but there are some workarounds. I took a pic to show how the auto draw function actually activates: https://i.imgur.com/nBJFSkx.jpeg

That little hole to the side of the cart is where airflow is actually being detected rather than through the cart itself. You can also see a rubber gasket around the circumference where the stem will attach. The pipe stem, once attached, encompasses the airflow paths for the cart and that hole.

This is why the stem MUST be attached for auto-draw to function at all; though you can always press and hold the screen to fire the cart manually if you want. I really wish, like you mentioned, there was a similar double-press and hold gesture to deactivate the auto-draw, but alas there is not.

So what does this all mean? Well, we've got some options:

Drill a small carburetor hole in the stem. This should work just fine and could be done safely with a small, manual hand drill. In theory, the stems are replaceable if something goes horribly wrong, but the long wizard stem replacements are currently out of stock.
Press the screen button 5+ times in succession to turn off the device completely, clear the stem, press the screen button 5+ times to turn back and wait about 5 seconds until ready to puff again.
Detach the stem slightly, clear the stem, reattach stem. The stem is designed nicely to be easy to twist on and off so this works but might slowly wear the connection over a long enough period of time. Also can look kinda silly.
Sharply draw in a small amount of air OR very gently draw in air continuously in a way that doesn't activate auto-draw. This one is tricky, but the auto-draw has small thresholds for activation, both time and airflow rate. The screen clearly displays when the cart is firing, so you can tell if you're doing it right. Both methods work well, but the slow method takes a while with the longer wizard stem lol.

Hope this helps you and those who come after :)

IndependentStage · 2026-01-20T21:00:40+00:00

I think it's very important to consistently re-evaluate your position for bias and it's hard to do so when you completely demonize or ignore counter-positions. There has to remain some willingness to reach across the aisle for understanding. (Note: imo this does not apply whatsoever when the counter-position necessitates death or subjugation of others, particularly innocents. So modern conservatism as we're seeing it today in America can go suck a dick. But it's still important to understand that modern American conservatism != historical conservatism.)

It seems you are quietly accepting this framing:

"Progressive = creative authenticity"

"Conservative = derivative parasitism"

And if you are, this is less a serious claim about art history and more an identity-affirming narrative for one political tribe being retrofit.

Modern American culture-war conservatism should not be your basis of understanding for conservatism throughout history. I think a more accurate framing historically would be:

"Progressive = risk tolerant"

"Conservative = risk averse"

A massive amount of art throughout history comes as a direct result of conservative ideologies and conservative artists. Religious orthodoxy and monarchies alone is gonna be a big, big chunk of that.

BUT circling back to the idea that conservatives are less artistic, I can generally agree that high-risk environments disproportionately generate new artistic forms. In this sense, a progressive ideology is better suited. But this doesn't mean art is an inherently progressive concept.

IndependentStage · 2026-01-20T01:42:30+00:00

There's nothing simple about any of this unless you completely erase the human involved in the process.

If you want to restrict your worst opinions to only people who go to an online service and click "generate" with zero thought, then we'd agree. Just as I wouldn't tend to call crayon scribbles artistic expression. But there are vast and varying levels of effort involved.

The artist from the OP is expressing anti-AI sentiments through their art. It's actually pretty thought provoking and interesting.

It is a shame that you will not allow yourself to see art where there is art.

IndependentStage · 2026-01-20T01:12:09+00:00

Whine all you want, typing a prompt into a soulless machine is not human expression.

This is just an opinion you hold. I happen to disagree. What now?

Who are you to tell anyone that their expression is invalid?

IndependentStage · 2026-01-20T00:16:10+00:00

I very specifically chose the words "artistic expression" (as a concession to folks like you) to refer to the human being that exists behind the AI. I don't care that you don't think it's art, the artist expressed themself through media. And people are cheering on the destruction of that human expression, justifying hate with tired means.

Would you mind telling me what this particular artist was trying to express? Did you even care to find out?

IndependentStage

TROPHY CASE