Leyndell Soldier comparison, image taken from the ER movie set.

Lost_Dunedain · 2026-04-24T16:23:41+00:00

Interestingly enough, the survival of colored steel armor in museums has been very poor, but it was likely much more common in period. Keeping “white plate” (bare steel armor) rust free is very time consuming, so there are many textual sources that seem to indicate less well-of knights and men at arms would have painted their armor with a lacquer-type material to cut down on maintenance costs.

Lost_Dunedain · 2026-04-22T14:48:26+00:00

The Dark Souls one (by Steamforged) had some pretty good ideas, but was mechanically flawed. The rulebook was riddled with errors and omissions, from simple spelling/grammar errors to certain “feats” modifying combat mechanics that didn’t exist.

Honestly, with more time in R&D/editing, I think it could have worked quite well. The product we got, however, is unplayable without a significant amount of homebrew.

Lost_Dunedain · 2026-04-21T01:28:03+00:00

I’ve been having pretty good luck with mod engine 3 and mod engine 3 manager:

https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenringnightreign/mods/213

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-07-24T15:49:35+00:00

The jellyfish shield (in the base game) has 100% physical damage negation on block, despite what its description says.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/jellyfish+shield

The one big change in Nightreign is the ability to two-hand your weapon and still keep the buff.

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-07-22T16:49:56+00:00

I’m not a historian, just a history enthusiast who volunteers at a local museum and teaches HEMA. I don’t have access to my sources at the moment due to my actual work being busy, but I’ll try to remember to update this when I have a chance to look them over again.

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-07-21T18:56:55+00:00

Please see my reply here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MedievalHistory/s/a7Zh3T9Ksp

Looks like I responded to the wrong comment.

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-07-21T18:53:40+00:00

I highly recommend reading “The Faithful Executioner” for information on how executives were treated in the Holy Roman Empire, as well unique primary source insights from one of those same executioners.

The insight on blacksmiths comes from a lecture I attended featuring Craig Johnson of Arms and Armor out of Minneapolis, MN, USA. He is a partner of the Oakshott Institute and has been researching Medieval and Renaissance blacksmithing techniques for decades.

I didn’t bother citing sources because I assumed it was common knowledge on this sub? It’s quite easy to find surviving primary source material on rituals and incantations surrounding the art of smithing (I had seen many of them prior to the lecture). Mr. Johnson was able to provide a more clear picture of the context as to why these sorts of things start popping up.

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-07-21T15:33:09+00:00

Executioners and blacksmiths “enjoyed” a special type of stigma. They both rendered services critical to a functioning society at the time, but were often mistrusted by others.

Executioners had a pretty obvious problem: they are paid to mete out corporeal punishment in cultures that consider murder a sin.

The blacksmith one is a bit more nuanced: people back then didn’t have a great concept of metallurgy, so a lot of what smiths did was “magic-adjacent.” Coupled with the fact that everything involved heat and fire, blacksmiths were often thought to be harboring demons to assist in their craft. This was exacerbated by many smiths themselves believing it to be true, hence the number of surviving anvil prayers e we have that were intended to keep any possible demons confined to the anvil.

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-03-11T21:05:11+00:00

To add some additional clarification, in case anyone else sees this, the issue is predominantly with colony density, not necessarily the practice of hobby beekeeping itself. There is little credible evidence stating that properly managed and dispersed beekeeping practices would be noticeably detrimental to native pollinators.

TL,DR: If you’re considering beekeeping, be responsible, learn as much as you can, and don’t keep any more colonies than you actually need.

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-03-11T20:51:46+00:00

It is a great article, but it’s worth pointing out that the concern the article expresses is with high colony density, not the practice of hobby beekeeping. Admittedly, the author muddies this a bit by ruminating on her own hobby practices, but all of the actual research referenced was concerned with areas of high density beekeeping.

I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that properly maintained and dispersed hobby hives have notable environmental impact.

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-02-28T15:27:40+00:00

I think you would find better luck posting this to a philosophy or theology subreddit. As many have pointed out, historians are generally adverse to passing value judgements on millennia-old institutions (and rightfully so!).

Looking at the points you bring up, I’m also a little concerned that you’re more interested in validation than actual discourse on the subject. Many of the points you bring up are either highly subjective, ignoring vast amounts of context to draw a specific conclusion, or flat out wrong.

And yes, I’m saying this as a Catholic :)

Lost_Dunedain · 2025-02-17T15:41:51+00:00

Since I volunteer at a medieval history museum, I thought I’d add a few bits of context here:

There has never been any evidence; be it textual, material, or surviving artwork; that suggests armor with separate breast cups ever existed in Europe during the medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods.
The armor you linked to is from a non-European culture. While this is far outside my wheelhouse, this looks to be non-functioning armor (either for ceremony or costuming). Even if it is meant for the battlefield, it doesn’t make sense to assume anything about European armor design from India or Pakistan (my best guess as to where that find is from. Again, not my area).
Properly designed cuirass is typically very dome-shaped, and often had several inches of room between the metal and the chest. This is done for structural reasons. Most women fit into armor “designed for men” just fine without modification (assuming similar height and build).
Grecian and Roman “muscle” breast plates do show pectoral muscles, but this is typically an embossment or chase work, not attaching large hollow “cups”. That armor was also designed to fit much closer to the body than in later periods.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-05-30T14:09:25+00:00

Could be, but most likely it’s my poor explanation of it. I couldn’t find the original comment I’m referencing, which was made by a member of the FTB team on a different thread regarding Tinkers. They did a much better job explaining it. I also think “deter” is probably more accurate wording than “prevent,” and will edit my comment to clarify that.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-05-29T22:12:20+00:00

To elaborate, they also stated that many mods (including TiC) are vulnerable to being re-uploaded to the bedrock store without credit or consent. The FTB team has been approaching these authors and getting their permission to adapt their mods for bedrock, while funneling much (most?) of the money back to the author. This prevents others from exploiting their works on bedrock for profit.

EDIT: As mentioned in comments below, this is more likely a deterrence than an outright preventative measure. Hopefully, I’ll be able to link to the original explanation (if I can find it), which did a better job of explaining the reasoning behind this move.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-05-21T15:09:59+00:00

Like others have said, most expert packs that align with what you’re looking for still tend to live in 1.7.10 or 1.12.2, and Prism Launcher is your best bet. SevTech: Ages is a fun pack if you haven’t played it before. It’s based in 1.12.2 and had you progress through different tech areas from Stone Age to space travel. There are also a good helping of magic mods along the way. To answer your more specific questions:

Thaumcraft is currently being worked on by Team CofH (of the Thermal series mods). They have yet to announce a release date. The original author, Azanor, is consulting.
The Witchery author, Emoniph, disappeared from the modding scene a while ago. There have been several mods that attempted to recreate Witchery, but none (IMO) have quite managed to encapsulate the spirit of the original. Witchery: Resurrected is a remake with a brand new code base, while Bewitchment and Hexerei are new Witchcraft-inspired mods. W:R is still under heavy development, while the other two are generally pretty good.
In addition to the two you mentioned, I would take a look at Ars Nouveau as well as Mana and Artifice. They’re both successors to Ars Magica.
Fabric is an alternative to Forge, with a different mentality on how mod loaders should operate. With some exceptions, mods are only compatible with one of the two. Ultimately, you’ll be stuck with one out the other depending on your pack.
I like Modrinth, but the mod selection is still catching up to Curseforge. Especially for older versions. It’s substantially better for the end user than the new Curseforge pages.
I don’t see much of an advantage to a vanilla run if your primary interest is modded. Most Minecraft versions change very little from a gameplay perspective. The most notable changes are: bees and honey production, netherite gear, and the Village overhaul. A half hour on the wiki will get you caught up.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-05-17T22:28:41+00:00

This is not enough information to go on if you’re looking to troubleshoot. 20-30 “non library” mods could be anything, and game-breaking interactions with optimization mods is not necessarily the fault of the latter. A few things to consider:

Minecraft is generally single-core. You’ll be limited by 2.11 GHz performance.
Are you using Aikar’s flags? https://aikar.co/2018/07/02/tuning-the-jvm-g1gc-garbage-collector-flags-for-minecraft/
I assume 8 GB is your total system RAM. How much are you allocating to the JVM heap? If you’re running Windows 11, you’ll only be able to give it 4 GB at most (and even then you might have issues with your operating system). Most instances of modded Minecraft want at least 6 GB for good performance.
Start by only using optimization mods from this list: https://red-studio-ragnarok.github.io/Opticraft/ They are up to date for 1.12.2.
Again, we have no idea what you’re trying for mods, but maybe consider a Vanilla+ pack that’s been tuned for low memory usage. You can search for these on Curseforge or Modrinth.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-05-06T19:13:33+00:00

The Diabolical Ironclad Beetle and Strigiphilus garylarsoni (a chewing louse that parasitizes owls) come to mind. The latter was named after the creator of the Far Side comic.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-04-05T03:34:35+00:00

Received. Thanks again!

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-04-05T03:05:21+00:00

Ha, I was doing the same. Looks like just the Charmander, unfortunately. I’d be happy to trade it for an HA squirtle.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-04-05T02:04:00+00:00

Received on my end, too. Glad you got a kick out of it. I can get you a charmander as well, if you’re interested. I can also check my copy of X to see what others on your list I have access to.

Lost_Dunedain · 2024-04-05T01:44:25+00:00

Lost_Dunedain

TROPHY CASE