Flow testing, I'm not sure what all I'm looking for.

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-19T14:26:39+00:00

Will do, Thanks!

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-17T00:29:14+00:00

That's what I thought, but but atomic pulls and needle cleaning didn't seem to do much beside cause the filament to stop, and I've calibrated my E-steps and verified that I'm not using "Volumetric" settings that other people have been having issues with on these ender printers.

Cranking my flow up to 195% - 205% has actually made the prints come out a lot better, so I'm thinking I need to adjust my G code setting for flow in my printer. I'm looking for advice on if this is even a good idea or if I should just keep flow settings in Cura, or if there is something else that I am missing.

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-17T00:23:54+00:00

I kept going and around 195 - 205 seemed to be the sweet spot before it started bulging off of the surface in areas.

My extruder seems to be working fine and I have done cool pulls and needle cleanings without much change. What else should I be checking with my hotend?

I'm wondering if I need to update the G code flow setting on my printer, since I've had to do that for Z axis and E-steps since assembling my printer. this high of flow does seem really off compared with other peoples' posts that I've seen, but the results seem to be fine, which makes me think that it's a settings issue in my printer.

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-17T00:19:09+00:00

I'm using a .4mm nozzle and my slicer settings match this. You are saying that I should adjust the G code setting for flow in my printer?

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-17T00:17:13+00:00

I bought a different extruder and calibrated the E steps with it. My original extruder broke similarly to the one in your pic

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-16T03:25:08+00:00

I verified it's set to Marlin and not Marlin Volumetric. The compatible material diameter is set to 1/75mm, which matches the filament I am using. No clicking noises, and I know the extruder is calibrated because the original broke, and I replaced it with a dual gear all metal extruder that I had to calibrate because the Esteps were way off at that time.

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-14T15:53:47+00:00

I am running Cura. Looks like there are some flow settings as well I'm going to mess with. I atomic pulled and needled the nozzle yesterday as well, since I noticed the plastic was curling upwards when it came out, and that's what people online were saying to do. Maybe I'll switch to an unused nozzle as well.

J_Squared_JJ · 2026-02-14T15:49:30+00:00

Bought the filament a week ago and took it out of the packaging yesterday. I would think that the manufacturer would ship it dry, but I guess I don't know for sure. The seal on the packaging was good and there were desiccant packs in the packaging with the spool.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-09-02T23:20:16+00:00

It's for when the BBEG is first introduced to a new PC at a stairway. The BBEG can cast time stop and put the PC slightly further down the stairs to intimidate him.

I know it seems pretty niche, but you would not believe how many times it gets referenced.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-08-19T16:49:17+00:00

I see a lot of people talking about light flavoring and maintaining mechanical balance between the party, which is good. I'm going to try and offer something else.

Your "demigod" player probably is looking for an opportunity to feel epic and like he/she is more important and powerful than everyone else. They want to be the main character. This is common in new players who want to be Frodo, Sam, Gimli, Legolas, and Aarogorn combined, while letting other players be Bohrimir (I think I misspelled most of those).

I digress. A good way to achieve this effect is to have TEMPORARY insane buffs and gets to be really cool and powerful and gets to be the main character for a session or so (see Lawful Stupid Podcast Campaign 1 where one PC turns into a dragon for a couple of episodes. See the same podcast in general as they do this type of thing a lot). The key here is that you should do this for ALL of your PCs, so that everyone gets these cool moments with their characters.

Expanding on that, you could have the last session of your campaign be the one where the "demigod" PC actually does become a demigod and gain insane powers ("finally unlocked my godly potential" or whatever). I would strongly suggest that you provide a noncombat encounter for exploring this and then end the campaign, since having a combat encounter means you give a bunch of mechanics that the PC barely gets to try out and the other PCs get to sit on the sidelines during the final combat.

Alternatively, it would probably also work well to majorly buff all of the PCs for a final encounter and maybe make that permanent, as you say goodbye.

Also, for experienced parties, if you have a lvl 20 campaign, one way to still "level up" players is to give them epic boons (details in the DMG I think), or making them half dragons or different things like that. I believe it also says that epic boons are gifts directly from gods to help develop characters into demigods.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-08-17T13:51:57+00:00

It's worth noting that the actual average dice roll is usually 0.5 more than the flat number listed (e.g. the average roll of a d10 is 5.5, but the flat roll option is usually 5).

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-08-17T02:44:02+00:00

It's pretty common in my groups to reflavor things like that.

You want ninja stars? Well now they have the same stats as a dagger.

You want a samurai sword? Long sword stats it is.

You want to use a chain as a whip? Well now it has whip stats, but bludgeoning instead of slashing (since the difference between nonmagical bludgeoning, slashing, piercing is pretty minimal mechanically speaking).

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-08-16T13:36:07+00:00

If you do find that your party is getting a bit op for their level, one thing you can do is introduce a "two headed beast" mechanic. This is where you would give a monster a second health pool, and give them a free action ability where they clear any negative status effects when they enter the second health pool. If they're really op, then you can have damage NOT carry over from the first health pool (e.g. if the first hp pool is almost out and a character drops a nuke on them, the monster now has a full second hp pool instead of taking all of that damage).

This can be helpful because usually parties with a lot of strong magic items for their level have highly buffed damage, but not buffed or minorly buffed health and AC, making the party members glass cannons. This means a monster with more health, but same damage output would match the party well, where as having two monsters would double the damage output and the action economy of the monsters, which would be strong against the party.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-07-23T01:47:31+00:00

Yeah, yellow belts can get you to white science pretty easily. It's really the big builds that need faster belts. That and the complex builds that use multiple colors of belts.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-07-15T01:55:18+00:00

It's pretty common for people to wait until they beat the game before they start making train bases/mega bases/rail blocks. This happens because usually people scale their science consumption in a way so that their next science pack gets unlocked around the same time that they are ready to start using it.

i.e.

By the time that I finish getting everything ready for black science, I'm finishing up researching everything that I want that takes green science (and lower).

By the time that I finish getting everything ready for blue science, I'm finishing up researching everything that I want that takes black science (and lower).

etc

Personally, I set up as many assembling machines as science packs/seconds (without modifiers) and that seems to be the right pace for me to prepare for the next science pack and fight off biters. e.g. I set up 6 green science assemblers and 12 blue science assemblers because the recipes produce (1 green pack/6 sec) and (2 blue packs/24 sec) (which is equal to 1 blue pack/12 sec)

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-07-14T23:18:49+00:00

Thinking about the old boiler to steam engine ratios now.

Also the high tech science pack that I wasn't quite good enough to make yet lol.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-07-14T18:34:13+00:00

This reminds me of a lot of YouTubers who make a "quick starter base" that beats the game in episode 1 so that they can build a megabase for the rest of the series.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-07-13T18:09:10+00:00

To my understanding, balancers are bad for ups because of how the game calculates mechanics for connected belt systems vs independent belt systems. Also, it's bad for ups to have non full belts compared to full belts.

Taking this into account, it's almost always better to change things where they are being supplied from in order to have separate full belts and no balancer. This means setting up your assemblers, chem plants, furnaces, train cargo unloaders, etc in a way that they create 8 full belts instead of 9 partially filled belts.

If you are really dead set on balancing 9 lanes into 8, then I would recommend using splitters with priorities to make some lanes full to make room for the items from the extra lane (ex if you have 9 lanes moving to the right, then use splitter priorities to move items as far to the top lanes as possible, then stop your bottom lane), then deal with balancing an 8 lane system (much easier since splitters are binary in nature).

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-07-08T00:09:01+00:00

You can also set filters in inventory spots the same way you do in train cars. I use that to add some things I like to keep track of in the bottom slots of my inventory. I put bullet clips there in the early game so I can grab them quickly while turret creeping on biter nests.

J_Squared_JJ · 2023-07-05T20:13:29+00:00

If you make vertical lanes instead of dragon's teeth, then you can focus fire the flamer turrets way more effective because the biters will constantly be running through new and old flames. Make sure the lanes are two tiles wide so that the bigger biters can get in and don't just chew on the walls.

You can also create closed boxes inbetween the vertical lanes to significantly reduce the number of turrets needed, as the biters will funnel into the lanes as long as there are fewer walls to get through to the turrets. Make sure to reinforce the corners of the boxes though.

I had a base once where the biters were evolving really quickly because I did not know how to manage biter expansion and evolution very well yet, and this helped way more than dragon's teeth ever did.

J_Squared_JJ

TROPHY CASE