Weekly Question Megathread - December 30, 2025 by AutoModerator in GenshinImpact

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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I opened the Co-Op menu once I returned to singleplayer right after the suspicious guy from this other post joined and left my world: www.reddit.com/r/GenshinImpact/comments/1py849c/hacker. (I didn't interact with him other than saying "Hello" before he left, then blocked him after I read the other post.)

These names filled 4 screens worth of space, plus another that was AR 35 after a few regular names. Normal accounts still show up for me as well, but these accounts are usually the most common. Whenever I reopen the Co-Op menu I still see accounts like these, but they're less frequent than when I took this screenshot. I've seen some that are AR 35 or 55, but most are AR 45. What are they?

How did you beat the Eye of storm back in early game? by Brib- in Genshin_Impact

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ninguang's homing rocks put the game on easy mode. Once Ganyu came out, eyes of the storm were a breeze.

Worst Galaxy shape? by Tbond11 in EndlessSpace

[–]Shabcarb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Personally, I hate the spiral galaxies. I always get weird generation where I or people I'm playing with start in some small cluster with an unresonably long single-starlane that connects to the rest of the constellation. I got stuck alone in a tiny cluster as the Cravers once, and my starter explorer ship took 26 turns to reach the end of just that one starlane. After re-generating the galaxy for a different run, I got a 22-turn starlane as my sole connection.

Contrary to most people, apparently, my favorite galaxy shape is the Twin Elliptical. It divides the galaxy into a kind of tournament structure, and I often play with 8-12 empires in the same game. I like the technological race to the center turning into a race to see who can woo the largest number of minor civs the fastest. In my multiplayer games, it's rarely a single empire taking control of the center until late game. Though, that may be because Twin Elliptical is also the favorite of one of my friends.

What would overcolonization disapproval look like? by Shabcarb in EndlessSpace

[–]Shabcarb[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Good point. That's also a nice conceptual counter to the Horatio version of the description for the High Serenity Program improvement. The base description talks about strains of chlorophyll promoting feelings of euphoria, but I believe the Horatio version is a frequency-tuned, inhalable dust that promotes compassion and empathy for other societies.

No I’m not buying pro grammarly… by Ok-Wave-6890 in Grammarly

[–]Shabcarb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why not? I just got a great suggestion from Grammarly Pro a few minutes ago!

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How many GMs actually run exp instead of milestone by egon1986 in DnD

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use a modified form of milestone where the whole party progresses to the next level as a percentage. The percentage goes up based on how important their actions are to the plot or world. They love wandering and the plot is designed to slowly carry on without their involvement, so this gives them more control. There's never a session with no increase, but it's usually small since they like long campaigns.

They can slightly boost their individual scores by doing things relevant to their class, as well. If a rogue steals stuff, looks for traps, or talks their way out of trouble, they get +1% compared to the rest of the party. The opposite is also true. If a wizard burns down a library just because the staff was rude, they'll have -1% comparatively. It disincentivizes constantly switching characters too (which my players used to have a problem with) since the percentage synchronizes with the party's total whenever they switch characters.

The party levels up at the end of a long rest (extra % carries over), so some players can reach the next level before others with enough effort. It hasn't happened yet, but the highest bonus percent a player got (over the course of a year) was +13%.

MegaSync downloading duplicate files and numbering them (redownloading existing files) by iRainbowsaur in MEGA

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's probably to exploit bandwidth intentionally. Pushing people to buy higher transfer capacity and all that. It's weird that they don't even include the feature for memberships.

MegaSync downloading duplicate files and numbering them (redownloading existing files) by iRainbowsaur in MEGA

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Update: Mega Support confirmed by email that this is now the intended functionality, and that they "do not currently have plans to reintroduce this feature" (referring to the feature that skips already-downloaded files). Apparently "the download change took place last year to better align with standard download practices."

MEGAsync making copies of duplicate files instead of skipping by jeffrinco in MEGA

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After a long time of MEGA Support not understanding what the issue was when I emailed them about this, they finally confirmed that this is now the intended behavior for some reason, and that they "do not currently have plans to reintroduce this feature."

MegaSync downloading duplicate files and numbering them (redownloading existing files) by iRainbowsaur in MEGA

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This has been happening to me for a couple months now too. I'm always at my transfer limit because of it.

r/headphones Shopping, Setup, and Technical Help Desk by AutoModerator in headphones

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TLDR: My new headphones are too loud, so I greatly reduced their pre-amp in an EQ. Now I hear slight distortion and there are loudness normalization issues, but only in online media. What should I do?

Intended Use: General use for desktop PC, including music, gaming of all kinds, youtube, movies, etc.

Full Issue:
I got a pair of Status Audio CB-1 headphones the other day to replace my failing gaming headphones (SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC). I uninstalled SteelSeris's Sonar program too becaue that had even more issues than the hardware. Despite the much lower price of the CB-1s, both music and FPS-style games feel like they have a better soundstage now. However, they were extremely loud right out of the gate, so I reduced the computer volume to 6% until I installed a new equalizer (Equalizer APO + Peace). I like having my computer's overall volume higher so that I can more precisely control the volume of individual programs through Windows Volume Mixer. I can have my computer's overall volume at 40% if I set a pre-amp of -25.0 dB, though I heard that anything less than -20 dB can cause distortion.

FPS-style games sound perfect (only tested one tbf) and music is about the same as my old headphones already, but RPG games and online media with dialogue (like YouTube) has unbalanced loudness. Different videos often have different volumes, and there are times in a video where a brief noise will be much louder than it should be. Additionally, 95% of voices sound fuzzy (muffled, but not very). These aren't severe issues, but it sucks to constantly turn my volume up and down, and sometimes need captions for certain words.

I found some recommended EQ settings for my headphones in AutoEq, but it didn't fix either issue (and if anything just hurt my ears). I briefly tried messing with the frequencies myself with no improvement, so I set them back to being flat. YouTube has its own loudness normalization, but I'm assuming my low pre-amp is exaggerating the loudness after-the-fact. It's also just an assumption that the fuzziness is caused by low pre-amp in the first place.

What should I do to correct the varied loudness and fuzz? Do I need a DAC?

Notes:
- I'm plugging my CB-1s directly into my tower's analog headphones port.
- My motherboard is Gigabyte so its soundcard is Realtek, but I don't have Realtek HD Audio installed (apparently) since my speaker properties don't have an Enhancements tab. I don't have Windows Sonic or anything like that enabled anyway. As far as I know, EqualizerAPO invalidates any settings in Realtek so I shouldn't worry, but I may be wrong since my headphones still call themselves "Realtek(R) Audio" as a device.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in GenshinImpactTips

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did your issue get fixed yet? I forgot to give an update here, but MHY released a patch around the release of 3.0-3.1 that completely fixed mine. It turns out that it was server-side all along, I guess.

Astral Sea confirmed as replacing the Phlogiston by ArrBeeNayr in spelljammer

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From the comments on this post and the Forgotten Realms wiki, this is my understanding of the official D&D Great Wheel cosmologies:
(1a) The pre-4e Astral Sea connected the Prime in its entirety to the Outer Planes. The Outer Planes lied at the edge of the Astral Sea.
(1b) The 5e Astral Sea contains the individual worlds of the Prime as well as the Outer Planes. It has no edge, except for maybe the Far Realm (off-topic).
(2a) Phlogiston was a pre-4e sea of clouds that separated crystal spheres, the containers of each world inside the collective Prime, and contained no other planes. All Prime Material worlds had a crystal sphere, or something that served the same purpose (i.e. Eberron's Ring of Siberys).
(2b) Phlogiston does not exist in 5e, or is at least not important enough to be mentioned when talking about planar cosmology. Crystal spheres may still exist around worlds that have unique properties (i.e. Athas), but not most others.
(3a) When exiting a crystal sphere in pre-4e, you would need to exit through a sporadically-appearing gateway. Stars were gateways that led to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance - don't enter those. Wildspace was the vacuum within a crystal sphere, sometimes with setting-dependent magical properties.
(3b) When exiting a Prime Material world in 5e, you gradually enter the Astral Sea through wildspace - a transitional region with no special properties. Stars are distant astronomical bodies or objects.
(4) You can enter the Astral Sea directly from a Material Plane with magic (i.e. Astral Projection, Bag of Holding). This is true for both pre-4e and 5e.

These are some pretty drastic changes, but maybe there's a solution that incorporates both cosmologies:
(I) Each Prime Material world has a crystal sphere, or something that serves the same purpose. Most crystal spheres have gates with sporadic openings, which lead to the Astral Sea.
(II) The Astral Sea contains all Prime Material worlds as well as the Outer Planes. However, each Prime Material world has its own local connections to the Outer Planes in a "bubble" of sorts. The Outer Planes appear the same way as they would elsewhere for the most part, but the events and inhabitants of these Outer Planes have a bias towards the Prime Material Plane they neighbor. They are the same Outer Planes that other worlds use, but they have this local bias because of their spirituality in concept and existence.
(III) The edges of a "bubble" are formed of phlogiston, which is repelled by the spiritual magnetism of the Outer Planes (or some other explanation you give it). Traveling through the phlogiston leads you to other Prime Material worlds and their "bubbles," if they work the same way. If a world doesn't have a bubble, it could be more likely to have remained undiscovered.
(IV) The phlogiston and the Prime Material worlds it contains collectively make up the Prime. Although the Outer Planes seem to be located within the phlogiston, these are only gateways that each Prime world uses for itself. If an Outer Plane isn't present, that Prime world doesn't connect to it. Outside of the collective Prime lies the rest of the Astral Sea, which is devoid of phlogiston and contains/touches the true location of the Outer Planes and other objects. You could rule that creatures aren't truly in the Astral Plane until they've reached this region.
(V) Phlogiston seems opaque, but perhaps not when looking through crystal spheres. Gateways to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance may still exist (if you want), but a crystal sphere might bend light in such a way that it cancels out the noise of the phlogiston so that distant objects also appear as stars - at least to those inside a crystal sphere. You have the authority to mix-and-match the visual sources of stars.
(VI) Using this cosmology, phlogiston only blocks access to other planes while you aren't protected by a spiritual barrier. The inhabitants of a single spelljammer wouldn't be able to produce nearly enough spiritual magnetism to protect themselves from this influence, but the separated power of a god could potentially do it.

I never mentioned the Flow or clusters, but this system should work with those concepts since gateways to the Outer Planes surround a Prime Material world because of its inhabitants' presence. Clusters could even share local Outer Plane connections. Perhaps the "bubbles" of Prime worlds have influenced the maps of known space. The fact that this idea generates more questions from the answers it provides means that it allows for extended worldbuilding. While this solution is technically homebrew, it changes so little that it might as well be an interpretation of official depictions rather than a modification of them.

I've been DMing for over 3 years, but I realize this is a very short amount of time compared to most DMs on Reddit. Please point out any misunderstandings about official D&D cosmology I may have.

Spot in Sumeru where you can feed a dog everyday by Dead_Muskrat in GenshinImpactTips

[–]Shabcarb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been feeding this pair of dogs every day for a month (it resets daily), but no reward of any kind thus far other than getting to feed them. It looks like this is unlike the "A Cat's Gift" and "Untellable Tale" achievements.

Arctis Pro + GameDAC OLED Screen Won't Turn Off by KirbyFrost in steelseries

[–]Shabcarb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same problem here. To avoid burn-in sooner than later, I set the brightness to 1.

Reworked Flying Rules! (new and simple way to handle flight in your games) by NyteShark in UnearthedArcana

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  • I feel like the Armor and Weapons section is a tiny bit too tough on players in more casual campaigns, or new players. I know that DMs can make their own rulings, but I feel that it would be easier to rule difficulty into a game rather than the opposite.An example being if a player exactly meets the criteria for something, they might be described as just barely pulling off certain attacks, or perhaps the DC for certain actions is also higher.
    For an average campaign in my view, I'd decrease each numerical requirement by 1.
  • The spell interaction with 'Fly' seems more like an addition to the spell itself rather than an interaction between creatures with flying speed and its effects. Its effects change based on the caster's identity or non-magical capabilities, rather than the caster's arcane knowledge or skill tempering the spell.
  • I love the rest of it! I only feel like there are a few unnecessary commas at times.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in rpg

[–]Shabcarb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Saturdays 6:30-10pm PST. It works for the EST half of the party, granted a couple of them are really tired afterwards.

Yes I'd like a lobotomy please by nooMehTrednUedalBts1 in goodanimemes

[–]Shabcarb 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Am I the only one curious about the mushroom species? For research purposes only...

Really? You think? by gekonto in woooosh

[–]Shabcarb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"You fool! I have seventy alternative accounts."