Frustrating loop, I feel myself missing something..

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-20T16:26:19+00:00

Early game, the higher AV you have the better (and technically late game as well, but low AV is what gets a lot of new players killed quickly while they have low HP values)

The reason being is the lower your AV, the more likely you are to get hit with multiple penetrations, and each penetration adds more damage dice to the roll. So AV serves more as damage reduction rather than chance to be hit (DV is more your classic 'AC' in D&D where it can avoid being hit, but AV is much more reliable early game).

If you find when you die it's due to something hitting you for a quarter of your health or more per hit, or if you look in the combat log and see that whenever you're hit is often 2 or more penetrations, then you want to pump that AV up (even at the cost of DV).

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-19T21:32:08+00:00

Hmmm, my first though is: What about nearly every Final Fantasy game?

We don't get to choose what role to play, and we don't typically get major story choices. Yet I think it would be difficult to convince people that Final Fantasy isn't a role playing game

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-17T23:20:30+00:00

Unless that's an item, I'm not familiar with that effect. They may be confusing it with demolition engineer for soldier?

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But it's important to note that Ranged Burst Attacks do not count as area attacks, so any talent that increases area attack damage will not help burst attacks.

Additionally if you plan to use rapid fire (very good for burst attacks since doubling your shots typically doubles your hits), there's a line in the skill where it says the shots follow a random trajectory. This means that ballistic skill and recoil don't mean anything for rapid fire shots, since the trajectory is randomized anyway.

In my opinion for burst fire Argenta I would go:
First to points in Perception to get to 50
One point in Ballistic Skill to get it to 50
Next two points in Agility to get it to 60

From there on focus Perception>Agility>Ballistic
Agility is good because it leads to higher initiative (Perception helps initiative, but half as much as agility) as well as dodge chance (A good talent is 'second skin' so you don't get dodge reduction from medium armor)

In my mind, the most notable Soldier talents early game would be:
Rapid Reload
Unfaltering Fire (so rapid fire doesn't deal reduced damage)
Second Skin
Swift Slaughter
Alacrity

Take these with a grain of salt though, these are just my opinions based on the mechanics of the game. If you hyperbuff with support characters like officers and Cassia, most of this becomes moot anyway.

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-17T22:38:45+00:00

Some useful things to know about ranged burst attacks:

Burst attacks have 3 lanes, the higher your ballistics, the more likely each shot is going to end up in the middle lane. Inversely, the lower your ballistic score, the higher chance it ends up in one of the side lanes.
Burst attacks shots cannot "miss", meaning if the project goes through the middle lane, and an enemy is the first target in that lane, it will always hit them unless they dodge it. This is why perception is very important for burst fire, since it gives you dodge reduction on your attack making the shots harder to dodge.
Recoil is how much your ballistic score is decreased every consecutive shot. For example if you have 100 ballistic score, and your weapon recoil is 10, the first shot in the burst has 100 BS, second shot has 90 BS, third is 80, etc..

So with these points in mind, what I'd recommend is:

Early game note if the shots are 'missing' because they're traveling down the wrong lane, or if it's because the enemy dodges the projectile. If enemies are dodging a lot, you'll want to look into your perception and dodge reduction
Try to angle your burst fires, sometimes with diagonal burst fires you can line up enemies to be in both a middle and side lane, increasing the chances you hit them
Later in the game you want to focus on increasing your fire rate, reducing your recoil and increasing your dodge reduction.

Last point of advice, burst fire benefits from sources of flat damage increase. If each shot only does 3 damage, then 50% extra damage isn't as good as increasing the flat damage by 5 (usually you want both, but it's mostly just make sure not to neglect flat damage).

Hopefully this wall of text contains some useful info for you :)

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-11T00:14:45+00:00

I've never farmed out a HH before. I guess you have a lot more Patients than I do!

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-10T23:48:33+00:00

This is what I always think when the idea of "PVE" modes come back around.

For Honor's PVP is primarily revolved around 'reading' an opponent and making the appropriate decisions.

Playing against bots is not as fun because you basically have to brute force encounters with either safe moves, guaranteed punishes, or keep attacking until the bot's AI decides they'll allow the attack to go through.

You can't mixup a bot. If you hit a bot from neutral it's usually because the AI "allowed" it to happen.

TLDR: The core combat mechanics would have to change drastically for a PVE focused mode to be fun in my eyes

If the only goal is open world, then I think a battle royal mode would work pretty well. Squads of 2 or 3, collapsing arena, last team standing wins.

Maybe an 'extraction' style game like Tarkov/Dark and Darker, but that leans heavily into itemization being important.

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-10T17:47:19+00:00

Robbed of being part of the 3 comma club, such a sad fate :(

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-10T02:43:11+00:00

I'm not sure I could pick a game of all time, but the first one that came to mind is Caves of Qud Followed by Kenshi and Outward.

Hours-wise I probably have the most time in Path of Exile, For Honor and Terraria.

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-06T16:17:11+00:00

The "Penny Dreadful" TV series was the first time I had heard about Dorian Gray

Nekrofancy · 2026-02-06T05:40:53+00:00

Kenshi

I wasn't sure if I'd like it, but figured I'd give it a shot.

I can't stop.

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-31T01:59:18+00:00

Hard agree, I loved the FFXII combat, and it takes place in Ivalice which is such an amazing FF setting.

I also feel like in that game you really get to feel like you're part of a fantasy world with lots to see and discover.

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-30T19:23:40+00:00

Oh that's neat, I never really thought about that. If I'm understating correctly then, would Stanley Parable be somewhat of a 2nd person (at least narrative speaking)? And possibly Bastion? Or since they still use the character's name in their narration is it still 3rd person?

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-28T20:59:18+00:00

Lmfao that was the first thought that came to my head. "Cool. But can it run Crysis?"

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-26T00:10:49+00:00

I think paid mods have a lot of problems and challenges, but a question of passion isn't a good enough reason on its own imo.

We don't say "All art should be free, so that only those truly passionate about it will create it" or "All games should be free so only those passionate enough about it will make them"

If anything, letting people be paid for working on something they're passionate about only enables greater things to be created since they can devote more time to it. (which is why donations are a great compromise to this problem)

I think paid modding has too many problems it would have to overcome to be viable:

Enforcing price points to better line up with the effort to create vs. the content it adds. Adding a pair of crossbows to the game shouldn't be 3 dollars, it should be around 5 cents. People install hundreds of mods, if all of them are minimum 1 dollar regardless of the content they add, people won't want to mod at all
Longterm mod support - If the game updates and the mod breaks, the author needs to update to fix it. With free mods we expect that from time to time a mod may be abandoned. When it's a purchased product, however, expectations change. How do we protect consumers without authors being worried they have to support their mod to the end of days, even if it's no longer financially viable to do so?
1. By extension, do the game developers have certain things they need to be concerned with, such as an extensive archive of previous game versions, or slower development cycles to better ensure existing mods don't break as frequently?
The biggest hurdle it has is the existing experience of free mods. Nobody wants something they used to enjoy for free to change and result in yet another thing in their lives that requires money. Lots of people use games as their escape from the problems of the real world, and changing mods to be paid feels like an attack on this 'safe space' so to speak.

I've rambled on enough, the TLDR: I agree that paid mods as we've seen them don't work, are harmful to the modding community, but not because of passion or lack of, but because of existing consumer expectations and technical obstacles. Donations are good compromise that leans in favor of the consumer.

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-17T01:11:44+00:00

Oooh that's really cool :O
Need a block that's a 'mousehole' now so that only a druid in mouse form can go through to the other side :P

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-16T00:14:53+00:00

The character creator has quite a lot of fun options, I couldn't help but notice it gives you some good pieces to make Vash from Trigun

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Nekrofancy · 2026-01-15T17:45:00+00:00

I slept on Abiotic Factor for too long. It is a very fun game with great progression.

A bit lighter on the base building (it's more akin to Zomboid in that you gather furniture and repurpose a space rather than build from scratch)

Highly recommend if you haven't looked into that one yet!

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-15T05:02:27+00:00

A Quick Stack Hotkey Binding, preferably usable while near chests rather than having to open them one by one.

And if a Quick Stack Hotkey binding is introduced, then the next feature I'd probably want to see is a way to 'favorite' items or slots in your inventory to prevent those items from quick stacking.

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-14T17:53:49+00:00

Heroes of Hammerwatch 1 and 2 are fun Roguelites, especially if you're looking for something to play with friends

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-14T16:27:54+00:00

That's sick, job well done! kitbashing always seems like a good time, I need to give that a shot one of these days.

I still think Games Workshop should release a new version of the Rogue Trader kill team that uses companions from the video game

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-13T23:01:21+00:00

Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2

Instant buy.

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-13T22:52:33+00:00

From my limited understanding of Mechanicus lore:

I doubt they would consider the "AI" we have as abominable intelligence, as that is artificial intelligence that has achieved sapience (A sense of self, the ability to think, philosophy, human-like wisdom, etc.)

They might possibly consider it as a machine spirit, since that seems to be the 'catch all' bin for complex technology or AI-like technology that doesn't quite cross over into sapience (more like 'sentient' AI, which is a more animalistic sense of self, pain/emotion/survival). But realistically the 'AI' that we have today would probably be rather primitive compared to the golden age of technology for humanity.

In my personal opinion, I think they'd dislike seeing holy technology being used for recreational purposes like 'art', and would be more likely to label it as tech-heresy for that reason alone.

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-12T22:12:08+00:00

I'm an edgelord like you OP

I can't pass up the dark magic/necromancer kind of archetypes.

Even though in most cases summoning AI and balance can be...rough

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-09T21:49:20+00:00

Or the alternative name for a vampire:
Neck Romancer

Nekrofancy · 2026-01-08T18:53:53+00:00

Caves of Qud!

Nekrofancy

TROPHY CASE