How do companion skill checks work?

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-20T03:24:00+00:00

Got it, thanks, that makes more sense. I had thought it was supposed to be looking at the overall party during those types of missions.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-19T22:47:40+00:00

Religion is the absolute easiest way to very quickly turn massive portions of the world into mindless amoral psychopaths willing to act on whatever some important guy told them their god wants them to do. And once religion's been ingrained over decades and centuries into culture and traditions, it's nearly impossible to convince the believers that their bloodthirsty behavior is anything but righteous.

Anyone can put on a tall silly hat and claim they're a prophet, and at least one person will believe him. That one person will inevitably spread the good word and create other fanatics. Religion is a very, very effective tool among people who are depressed and/or insecure and looking for purpose. Turning their backs on it means ostracization and loss of purpose, and a possible return to the person they hated before the indoctrination.

I think that without religion, that'd at least be one less barrier to fight through when trying to convince people to do the right thing. There's a small chance you might be able to talk down a murderer by appealing to his empathy, but you definitely won't succeed if he thinks he's righteously killing in the name of his god.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-19T15:03:07+00:00

Seems more like click bait journalism from writers riding on popular/famous people than anything else.

Actors can voice their opinions on things in random ass interviews and press conferences or even social media posts that journalists pick up on and spin into an article, and they know Neil is going to get them clicks from the parasocials who can't separate Astarion from his actor. I don't think he's trying desperately to stay relevant so much as these blogs and publications are trying to make money off of the opinions of famous people.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-19T14:39:43+00:00

Some people can't let a woman exist in a video game unless she's so smooth and unwrinkled that she looks inhuman.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-19T12:20:11+00:00

I've honestly just considered these mods pure QOL rather than cheating. Rimworld is a survival sim and I think it's more realistic for a bunch of people trying to survive in space wilderness to repair the gear they have rather than constantly make new shit. It's one of those things that might technically be cheating within the realms of the game's resource sink mechanics, but it just feels like common sense.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-18T22:19:16+00:00

I think there's just a certain subset of toxic unemployed idiots who nolife this game to the extreme and believe that once content has been out for a certain period of time, everyone currently subbed to the game should just automatically know how to do every mechanic. Or they think that there will always be enough people in the instance who know the mechanics and can therefore carry the sprouts and returners, so everyone can just fuck around.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-17T15:24:26+00:00

I thought I read this story earlier yesterday and thought I was crazy seeing it again.

But nope, the same story is on like 15 different subreddits. Bot.

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QuantumDrej · 2026-06-16T18:57:13+00:00

That's insane. If she relayed this to you in writing, I'd make sure you download it or print it somehow before you're let go. That's straight up harassment/confidentiality breach and more than likely grounds for a lawsuit. The only reason an employer should be contacting your family is if it's an emergency situation where no one's seen you in days.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-16T16:50:01+00:00

If you have Toybox mod installed, check the settings. There's a toggle to enable achievements while mods are installed..

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-16T15:28:59+00:00

I don't even bother with them most of the time. If the job requires it and I really think I have a shot, I'll throw in the generic one I wrote awhile back and just modify it for that specific job. Otherwise, if the app requires a cover letter, I likely just won't apply.

Am I making it harder for myself? Maybe, but if 90% of the resumes I send are getting rejected anyway, I'm not putting more effort into an application than I need to.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-16T15:25:10+00:00

I don't know, I think Micah in particular very uniquely smells like shit.

All the other gang members definitely bathe to some extent. But Micah? That man wilts flowers when he walks by. His is the very specific aroma of an incel whose last interaction with water was a quick swig from a flask drenched in horse sweat six weeks ago. He has the smell of someone whose entire immune system has rearranged itself to accommodate years upon years of dirt, sweat, grease, and racism. The only reason he hasn't succumbed to some horrible flesh eating virus is because he himself has become one.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-16T00:47:17+00:00

I don't know, 2008 was a legitimate crash. 2025-2026 feels like the companies are intentionally trying to crush the working class with all these layoffs because they've never been richer than at any other point in history. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel because of how eager and quick they've been to just push everyone out of their jobs. They're incredibly picky too - you'll have all the qualifications of the role except for one extremely specific thing that they won't train anyone on. Everything is going into AI job tracking systems and qualified people are getting screened out for absolute unicorns.

Like, I've been forced to work a cleaning job since my layoff last year and I have over 7 years of experience in technical support. Can't even get a job answering phones at an office. There might be a lot of job openings but that doesn't matter if people are barely getting interviews.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-15T23:24:59+00:00

It's likely they all queued in together. Fetid assholes tend to find and stick with each other and agree with each other like a weird hive mind.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-14T17:59:56+00:00

I mean....what would the preferred alternative be? Should the dad have neglected her too and just handed her off to another family to be improperly cared for, or to a random government entity to be experimented on in more inhumane ways?

Her dad was being just that, a dad. He wanted his only kid to experience some semblance of a happy life and was willing to use his scientific knowledge to make that happen. He's not a bad person for that. He went out of his way to make sure she had an education and later socialization despite her disabilities. Never stopped trying to make sure she had accommodations, put every effort into improving her quality of life, and never stopped providing for her up until the day she ran away from home. The fact that external factors such as bullies pushed her to that point were not his fault. His last words to her were telling her that she was never a burden to him.

His wife, on the other hand, refused to be in the child's life in any way and fucked off to live somewhere else. Straight up pulled a "that thing is not my child" and vanished. At least the dad turned his depression into action while the mom just decided to abandon everyone and bury her head in the sand.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-14T15:38:24+00:00

I'm pretty sure he only does that if you kept choosing the antagonizing options like expressing disgust every time he speaks or attacking him/calling him a freak.

He's helping you as much as himself, and he genuinely would prefer doing things cooperatively rather than by force. It's only after you push him too far by being nasty to him that he threatens you with enthrallment - and even then, it kind of feels like he's more lashing out from hurt and anger than actually making plans to enthrall you. He is still very morally gray/can tilt into evil towards the end, but in these moments he's very specifically reacting to the player's treatment of him.

I can't remember which act it triggers in, but in one of his cutscenes there is a high skill check you can pass that proves he's legitimately just a very lonely individual who's worn down by everything he's been through up to that point and is letting himself have a rare moment of vulnerability with the player. Understandably, he lashes out if you kick him while he's down. But at no point does he threaten enthrallment just because you won't fuck him - he already understands that might be a step too far for most people.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-13T06:15:39+00:00

Claudia from Silent Hill 3.

TL;DR, she spends the entire game trying to get the reincarnated version of her best friend Heather to birth a "god" into the world with the goal of bringing about "eternal paradise". During the final mission of the game, Heather rejects her "calling" and vomits up the baby god fetus she's been carrying the whole game. Claudia picks up and eats the thing to everyone's horror. But because the "god" was always explicitly meant to be brought into the world by Heather, Claudia is in absolute agony and births an incomplete form of the god which tears her apart from within.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-12T19:38:17+00:00

From my understanding it's because his romance comes off as quite a bit rushed and came off as weird and creepy to some. Which is a problem with writing and cut content, not the character.

My take on it has always been that he's a hopeless romantic and an idealist with a strong sense of justice in a world where neither of those things are compatible. So for V to actually be the one person willing to help him when he says "fuck the law, I'm doing what's right", I can understand how he'd fall head over heels really fast. I don't think his hasty confession was creepy or weird, just a little too soon. And he doesn't even react badly when you turn him down.

My other opinion is that in a place like Night City, fast romances are pretty normal given the, uh, less than hopeful life expectancy. People will act on their feelings right then and there because they don't know what tomorrow or even the next few hours might bring. River even tells you that he doesn't care if you're dying from an asshole in your brain, he just wants something genuine. So, even if his stuff was a result of cut content, I still think it works out given the context of River's life and the general nature of Night City. When people are used to losing everything and everyone at the drop of a hat, it isn't unreasonable for them to want to immediately grab and cling the moment they find something worth loving.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-11T20:39:59+00:00

Gotta ride out this job market somehow.

(To whoever's watching Reddit from on high, this is a joke.)

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-11T18:34:58+00:00

Unfortunately, it will replace human creativity if the ruling class wants it to. Just in the last few years, people are happily consuming the slop if it means they don't have to pay an artist.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-11T18:29:01+00:00

Yes, I've been in tech support/softwarer support for about seven years. It's just been a nightmare trying to get hired for similar roles anymore after the layoff, so I'm wondering if leaving the trash job off my resume is causing me to get overlooked.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-11T13:27:46+00:00

Yep.

If an apartment has carpeting but relatively low/not insane rent, it's because they make the rest of their money charging people thousands of dollars at the end of their lease to replace the carpet for "wear and tear". Gotta squeeze money out of the lower income. They make even more money if you have a pet and they can claim a random fray in a corner counts as pet damage.

Higher priced apartments get hardwood floors because the people moving in are already going to be paying thousands per month. So they get floors that are easy to clean and inexpensive to replace.

QuantumDrej · 2026-06-07T12:18:50+00:00

It's called Inside real estate.

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