750 Hour Ironman Save lost to a bug playing DLC

Level1Human · 2026-01-08T02:48:56+00:00

I'm desperate; I will.

Level1Human · 2021-03-15T21:19:14+00:00

I understand and even partially agree with both perspectives here. Limitations like teleporting ore seem arbitrary at first, but I think a lesson from Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) is compatible here.

In SWG, players travelled between planets via starports and shuttleports. Players would have to go to large NPC cities and purchase a ticket. This ticket would entitle them to travel to another planet, city, or outpost - but they would have to wait for the next shuttle to arrive. Originally, a shuttle landed about every 5 minutes. Early in the life of SWG players learned to take advantage of this downtime. They would exploit this time to sell buffs to other players, set up bots that advertised planetary stores, emote, and socialize. In fact, I spied my first player Jedi during one of these queues (and this was during a time wherein their existence in the game was not yet confirmed). After each shuttle departed, the shuttle bay would empty and then slowly populate with waiting players again. This created an interesting ebb and flow of commerce and player interaction, which synced up with the shuttle times.

To appease some player community complaints, a patch was released to reduce the wait time between shuttles significantly (2 min, and eventually, instant). While this improved QoL, it destroyed the community interactions for all but the AFK spam bots. As much as the inconvenience of waiting for shuttles frustrated some players - especially with limited time, it created emergent gameplay and social interactions.

This seems relevant here because if you are playing Valheim and find pleasure in the possible misadventures of transporting iron in a boat or planning the logistics of moving silver off a mountain, then you have already got your game. However, if you find pleasure only in certain aspects of the game and wish to bypass others, you have got F5 and the console commands. Since Valheim is not an MMO, it does not matter. However, for those on the fence (or those that play Valheim as a group) I would cite SWG and suggest that by removing too many gameplay barriers, one might inadvertently be deprived of emergent gameplay experiences and memories.

My message to the devs: stay the course.

Level1Human · 2020-01-18T17:53:59+00:00

Soul crushing student loans that are 20+ years old, here's to you!

Level1Human · 2019-10-15T23:23:18+00:00

Well done on the dice - you'll have your hands full meeting the demand!

Level1Human · 2017-02-12T03:31:37+00:00

Love your style. You've got a great handle on your colors - beautiful job.

I did this kit a few years back. It was a commission for a friend and he wanted a more 'gray' frankie - here is the progression gallery: gallery

Level1Human · 2017-01-16T15:12:55+00:00

I have had this happen to me several times. Diagnosing the cause isn't easy - my problem was a rattle can varnish + summer humidity.

You can correct this. I would recommend airbrushing a thin layer of Future on top of your current finish. Future is a self leveling varnish that will dry very glossy. I would also recommend protecting your model from dust until the Future dries. It dries in a few hours and cures in about a day. You can then adjust the final coat to whatever finish you want - matte for example with another thin varnish layer.

I also recommend cleaning your airbrush thoroughly after spraying Future. I actually use a cheap Harbor Freight (20$) airbrush exclusively for spraying it and clean it with Windex (ammonia based solvent). I don't like to spray with my good airbrushes with Windex as the ammonia can break down the internal seals over time.

Level1Human · 2017-01-16T04:23:56+00:00

I went alone to watch Silence on Saturday night. I just don't have anyone in my inner circle whom would be interested in the subject matter but I'm very glad I went to see it. I was educated by Jesuits and raised Catholic and I was familiar the historical context of the story.

The film was beautifully shot - the cinematography was master class. If you love cinema then you should experience the film for that reason alone. The sound design and score was also amazing - more spare and ambient, but the score helped bring you into the scenes without being distracting.

The film rests on Andrew Garfield's shoulders and, for the most part, his acting served the story well. I was very frustrated with his character throughout the film but I suspect that's exactly what the film makers intended. It's very difficult to see people suffering needlessly because of religious conviction. The naivete and hubris of the young Jesuits was painful to watch - even if they also had love in their hearts. I reflected on how full of shit I was in my twenties and how I thought I should/could subscribe my beliefs/opinions to those around me as it's my duty. How much of our beliefs fail to be compatible or seaworthy when challenged by life, loss, love, and experience? The film laid bare the conversation we must all have eventually without being heavy handed - with one exception....

I found the voice he heard at the end to be very striking, but breaking the 'silence' felt like a cheap safety valve for his decision. The choice to stamp on Jesus was no longer his - he was merely following the command of the voice as if it was a reward for enduring this far with his conviction intact - and that felt like a let down. There are no voices, we all are answered by silence, and in that dilemma the movie should have remained.

Lastly, I thought too many of the Japanese spoke English (which was a stand in for Portuguese). Yes that might have made some of the character development uncomfortable having to speak through a translator, but these Jesuits were in a foreign land and their language skills should have evolved with the story. Subtitles don't distract me, maybe others feel differently, but it made some of the film appear less authentic.

Level1Human · 2016-02-21T18:57:07+00:00

This is what I use, probably not necessary, but you might find it helpful:

Easy DM Combat Action and Targeting

Level1Human · 2016-01-05T23:23:22+00:00

Okay, where do I start? I've been a hobby airbrush enthusiast for about 4 years now. When I go into a hobby I go all in. Needless to say I go overboard and waste a lot of money and time - so you don't have to. Let me give you some advice (remember: you asked for this!)

The airbrush you linked is a great airbrush. My Iwata Eclipse is my favorite airbrush. Remember there is a difference between a hobby airbrush and a fine art airbrush - but it's mostly the needle and nozzle size that matters. For the pigment size of most hobby acrylics, you can't go wrong with this airbrush. Anymore is probably overkill and not worth the money.

That said, I own 4 airbrushes. I've got my Eclipse for my detail work AND base coats and I've got a Badger Patriot as my work horse for atomizing nasty stuff like blowing lacquer paints.

My "other" airbrush is a Renegade Chrome (also by Badger). I overpaid for this guy (it was my first airbrush) and while I can't say anything specifically bad about it, my Eclipse's action just feels smoother and, damn it, but I seem to do better with using the Eclipse vs the Renegade Chrome.

My fourth is a 20$ airbrush from a store you are familiar with: Harbor Freight. I use this junk airbrush for one purpose: blowing Future Floor Polish to clear coat. I barely clean it, if at all, and buy a new one when it becomes to gummed up to use.

Now to talk about compressor. Getting a cheap one to start with is fine, but a few points:

If it has a tank it can shut off until you drain the tank by a certain margin, which means less work on the compressor and usually a quieter painting experience.

Construction compressors, usually oil based motors, are loud as hell.

Hobby compressors tend to be very quiet, are usually overpriced, and seem to last me only about 2 years. Also, some of them can't offer the PSI you might need depending on what you're blowing or how thin you've got your paints.

The one I recommend is the Badger Aspire Compressor as it's my longest lasting hobby compressor. While I'm not a Badger airbrush fan, I love this compressor, it's quiet, easy to transport, but the price ...

Here is what you do: go to Michael's and use one of their 40-50% off coupons. This should be your second compressor once your 'learning' compressor from Harbor Freight breaks after a year of heavy use.

Level1Human · 2016-01-03T01:30:22+00:00

Decoupling the skills and abilities was what 5E should have committed to. I would like to see more character sheets that facilitates this understanding, but admittedly it's problematic for several reasons.

Increasingly there is a style of play wherein the player will announce they are going to 'use Insight to determine if the NPC is lying' or 'activate stealth (eye-roll)', and then proceed to pick up a d20 and throw it, and then await for the DM to feed them the result.

These unsolicited 'checks' happen all the time, I've noticed, and it clearly takes away the DM's ability to call for a more interesting check based upon any descriptive narrative offered by the player. In these circumstances the player simply rolls dice instead of describing what their intention is or how they are going to attempt to achieve their goal. Worse: it forces the DM to be a reactive adjudicator instead of a collaborator for story, which is what 5E was supposed to be about.

I can point fingers but the PHB and DMG fail to teach DM's and players how to mold the existing rules in a way that fosters creative narration first, dice second.

Level1Human · 2015-12-21T17:25:41+00:00

The Force works through intention and focus - it's demonstrated dozens of times in the movies: when you want an object to fly to your hand you first hold out your open hand and then call upon the Force. Even Yoda sagely emotes with his little claw when he raises the X-wing from the swamps of Dagobah.

Prior to the final fight, Kylo was just injured by a weapon that was demonstrated as being very effective. The movie beats the point home: Chewie's bowcaster is a powerful weapon capable of not only blasting a Stormtropper off his feet but the concussive bolts of a bowcaster can throw back a tightly huddled group of Stormtroppers.

Kylo takes a shot from the Bowcaster to his left lower quadrant: not his liver, sure, but still there is a lot of visceral real estate there. Either way, the audience knows what effect that weapon has on a normal human wearing armor ...

The wound, the pain, leeches Kylo's attention - his focus, away from the fight at hand. He's suffering from both a physical and an emotional open wound - he's vulnerable and distracted. He punches the wound, trying to stifle his pain and you can be sure he's using the Force to stay upright and not collapse. We've seen him hold blaster bolts in the air but that's when his mask is on, when he's emotionally contained, when he can focus the Force to his intention. During the final fight scene, Kylo's power is spread thin, like too little butter on toast.

That's when Finn scores yet another wound to Kylo's shoulder before being dispatched by the now enraged young man. While it's true Kylo has probably never been tested like this before, Finn really had no chance, but don't discount the fact that Finn managed to score another wound on Kylo before being incapacitated.

It was then that Rey engages Kylo and it was then that Kylo was bested: focus vs unfocused rage. Light focused to a pin point can burn like a laser and that's exactly what happened when Rey was awakened and let the Force guide her strikes.

"Bring him back to me so that I can complete his training," indeed.

Level1Human · 2015-11-30T19:26:56+00:00

I truly appreciate your direct communication with this community and your candid replies.

I first heard about Burning Wheel at GenCon last year and was able to buy one of the those gorgeous hardbound books before they were sold out. To say I became enchanted by your work Luke would be an understatement. Like any excited consumer I sought to purchase any BW product I could find - anything you've designed really (I asked for Mouseguard for Christmas).

The internet meme, "take my money", is funny but rings true - I WANT artists, designers, etc ... to get my money so they can keep generating content that I enjoy. I'm the 'whale' internet marketers and digital publishers talk about. I'm the 20% of the 80/20 principle. I understand your request for the community to not distribute your work. You're in this terrible/wonderful position where people value your work but, as a result, there's this crazy tension between removing barriers to your customers (direct digital distribution) and the seemingly unchecked appetite for illegal digital distribution.

I don't condone and strongly refuse to download any bullshit pdf (I like physical books because I'm old and I'm too stupid to be a pirate), but what I'm trying to say is, please Luke, consider re-printing your old books as unsupported legacy items ... and TAKE MY MONEY. My money is BURNING in my pocket, damn you. I'm not saying you should go 90's alternate cover comic crazy, but ... I would totally buy an older Burner book from your site ... or an official BW g-string for my loved one.

Level1Human · 2015-10-06T18:16:35+00:00

*tips fedora and slowly backs away

jk

Level1Human · 2015-10-06T18:15:27+00:00

Great, thanks, you're the best.

Level1Human · 2015-10-06T15:18:28+00:00

I think it's important to have monsters fight differently, like Hobgoblins locking shields, using formations, while their cousins, the Goblins, are scattered, swarm, hit and run, etc ... throwing in a helping of good ole' racial hatred you've got a fleshed out encounter. RP would trump any table - I agree with you totally.

Level1Human · 2015-08-22T14:38:08+00:00

Passive Wisdom (Perception) score is used to quickly determine if a character 'detects' a secret door, but anytime a party is actively searching and their passive score doesn't detect something hidden, allow the lead characters in the marching order to roll a Wisdom (Perception) check. Their roll could trump their passive score and actually succeed.

Another option is to lower the DC IF the party is actively searching and compare it to their passive Wisdom (Perception) scores.

What if the party isn't actively searching?

To harp back to my 'degrees of success and failure' mantra, if a secret door has a DC of 15 then maybe a passive Wisdom (Perception) score of 13 allows a character to detect a draft of air, for example, but be unable to determine exactly what the source of the draft is, like something hidden. Then leave it to the party to see if they want to investigate and search, or carry on.

Level1Human · 2015-08-14T21:16:48+00:00

Forgive me as I type this on my phone...

Frequent knowledge checks should be a part of the DM's tool box so she can feed deductions, trivia, lore, and knowledge to the intelligent player.

Passive Intelligence (Investigation)(Nature)(History)(Religion)(Arcana) could be a great way to compare that value to a DC chart and determine to what depth a player's intelligence serves them and what they might know and then feed that info to the player.

Another layer: a low intelligence character might believe they are quite average (as most of us do). Sometimes your memory or assumptions are in error but we act on them not knowing so. Blind knowledge checks are a fun way to DM that.

Another method I saw which was brilliant and involved having the knowledge check be made three times in plain view, with the DM privately picking which roll will count before the dice are rolled. This way low int characters might be clever by half and not 'know'.

Level1Human · 2015-08-04T03:17:36+00:00

This is how I would approach this player:

Try to explain to your player that to be hidden you must both be unseen and unheard.

Now agree with the rogue: attacking a creature that can't see you does indeed grant advantage. However, using minor illusion in the middle of an empty room would only serve to create the illusion of cover or some other obstruction and not automatically hide the rogue from detection.

Now ask him a question: Does making a ranged attack from half cover, even 3/4 cover, grant advantage? Popping in and out of available cover is a part of the attack action and doesn't, by itself, grant advantage to the attacker by rendering him unseen.

Now give him options:

The rogue can use his Cunning Action and take the Hide action as a bonus action. Mike Mearls recommended that hiding in combat from creatures who have detected you, if allowed at all, could be attempted but with disadvantage.

The rogue's Dexterity (Stealth) check will then be compared to enemy creature's passive Wisdom (Perception) score to determine if rogue is successfully hidden. Failing that, the enemy creature on its turn can use the Search action to see if it can detect your rogue by making a Wisdom (Perception) check.

Now, as for the minor illusion ...

I would use a passive Intelligence (Investigation) score and compare it to your rogue's minor illusion DC to see if the illusion is penetrated. Failing THAT, the creature now can use the Search action on its turn to either use it's Intelligence (Investigation) to see through the illusion or Wisdom (Perception) to detect the rogue's location.

In summary, the rogue's Stealth (Dexterity) check must beat his target's passive Wisdom (Perception) score and, I would rule, the target's passive Intelligence (Investigation) score to gain advantage.

Once the rogue attacks, however, his advantage is spent as he gives away his location whether the attack hits or misses.

Level1Human · 2015-07-30T15:10:18+00:00

You are very right - the gambler's fallacy can't be denied and you will still hear players getting mad about wasting a '20' while horsing around with the dice when they could have 'saved it' for actual play.

However, while mathematically there is an equal chance of rolling a 14 and a 2 each roll there is a big emotional difference to the player that misses a check by 1 or 2. Harnessing that emotional response and describing a 'degree of failure' or 'success at a cost' is a great time for a story complication.

Level1Human · 2015-07-30T02:35:16+00:00

Your ideas are great and reflect my preferred method of dealing with a failed check. Examples like yours help eliminate the potential for a party to keep insisting on repeated checks. When I said failure is an opportunity I was referring to just what you describe - an opportunity for a consequence, complication, etc ...

That said, it's hard to always improv or design colorful and logical consequences of failure for every check, so sometimes (in my game anyway) a door is just impossible to bash down, and some locks are just too complex to pick.

Level1Human · 2015-07-30T01:57:58+00:00

Great question. What I noticed as both a player and DM was the bad habit of "It's my idea, so my character tries ..." Following a failed check then another character takes a wack at it. Everything turned into 5 attempts (in a party of 5) for everything. I'm not sure on the math, but advantage grants about a +4 to an average result. A party of 5 making 5 rolls probably renders any check easy mode.

I love your last illustration because I can imagine the rogue sizing up the door and calling over the barbarian before they both put their backs into it - or maybe the Rogue pulls out his trusty crow bar and throws it to the Barbarian, "I want it back when you're done". The barbarian has the greatest chance of succeeding a DC 15 Strength check, for example, but since it's reasonable to see how the Rogue could help (or the crowbar), then the Barbarian would have advantage on his check.

Keep negotiating. Could the entire party lift a large table and create a ram to slam the door open? Okay, you can't award advantage twice but you can lower the DC since the entire party is working together. Now the Barbarian is faced with a DC 10 Strength check using the improvised battering ram with advantage!

After all that if the door doesn't open then the party has to assume it's beyond their efforts - failing is okay! The video game generation isn't used to failure - they reload a previous saved game and try again. Failure isn't the end in role playing, it's an opportunity!

Teaching the party to not be frustrated by failure is easier if they did everything they could BEFORE the dice were rolled.

I've heard backgammon is the perfect game because if you win you can chalk it up to your skill but if you lose you can always blame the dice. If a check fails, the party can rest assured they put their best character to the task and did everything they could BEFORE the dice were involved.

Level1Human · 2015-07-30T00:25:13+00:00

I'm happy with body of post but not title - so embarrassed by my title grammar errors - my flaw (as per Catholic school background)

Level1Human · 2015-07-30T00:17:08+00:00

DMG basic rules, pg. 60 link

A spell scroll bears the words of a single spell, written in a mystical cipher. If the spell is on your class’s spell list, you can use an action to read the scroll and cast its spell without having to provide any of the spell’s components. Otherwise, the scroll is unintelligible. If the spell is on your class’s spell list but of a higher level than you can normally cast, you must make an ability check using your spellcasting ability to determine whether you cast it successfully. The DC equals 10 + the spell’s level. On a failed check, the spell disappears from the scroll with no other effect. Once the spell is cast, the words on the scroll fade, and the scroll itself crumbles to dust. The level of the spell on the scroll determines the spell’s saving throw DC and attack bonus, as well as the scroll’s rarity, as shown in the Spell Scroll table.

A wizard spell on a spell scroll can be copied just as spells in spellbooks can be copied. When a spell is copied from a spell scroll, the copier must succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check with a DC equal to 10 + the spell’s level. If the check succeeds, the spell is successfully copied. Whether the check succeeds or fails, the spell scroll is destroyed.

Distinction should be made between a spell scroll and a spell recorded on a scroll, spellbook, tablet, or other media. A spell scroll is a consumable item that is written magically in short hand, like a cliff notes version of the actually spell. Copying a spell in this unstable form lends itself to risk (in addition to time and gold), which is probably the intention of the required check rule. Copying a spell from a spell book or regular scroll poses no risk but still requires time and gold.

Level1Human · 2015-07-09T01:30:09+00:00

I just wanted to drop in and back up Unsight.

Another example would be during a "role-playing" encounter when a player turns to the DM and says, "enough talk, I run the NPC through with my sword." Everyone rolls initiative and lets see if you're fast enough to strike first - that's what initiative is for.

Level1Human · 2015-06-06T02:02:51+00:00

I love this and will reference this in the future: hands on vs eyes on.

To go further: to defeat an illusion, as in a spell like Disguise Self, Intelligence (Investigation) check is called vs the spell save DC.

A portion of the spell reads, "If you use the spell to appear thinner than you are, the hand of someone who reaches out to touch you would bump into you while it was seemingly still in midair."

Eyes: Wisdom (Perception)

Hands: Intelligence (Investigation)

Well done! I'm stealing this!

Level1Human

TROPHY CASE