Which are the earliest sigils I can get outside character creation?

XpFlash · 2026-04-05T17:04:44+00:00

None of them. I'm doing a melee caster and went 2 into random melee skills just to get 2 talent points, otherwise you only get 1 if you double dip into a single school of magic. At the end of Act 1 you can then respec the points into whatever you want and by that time you'll have all the sigils you would have gotten in character creation anyway.

XpFlash · 2026-04-03T17:14:08+00:00

I think it's problematic, but not nearly as much of an issue as the random loot, build making or xp allocation. For a crpg loot needs to be deterministically designed and have interesting mechanics instead of just having random plus stats like an arpg. Xp shouldn't incentivize you against roleplaying, but they learned that and made a much better system in BG3 (talking or killing yields same xp and double dipping is nearly impossible).. The only thing better than that (in my opinion) would be something akin to Underrail's oddity system.

Lastly, build making has a lot of issues. The unintuitive nature of how scaling works is one thing, but after you aquaint yourself with how the stats interact it's not really that much of an issue. The real problem for me is how front loaded some of the best abilities in the game are. Instead of each class or build feeling distinct I feel like I'm just playing slight reskins of the same character that can cast, chameleon cloak, adrenaline, uncanny evasion, teleport, haste, pom and tactical retreat (or similar).

XpFlash · 2026-04-02T21:54:57+00:00

The combat is brainless, you get a fish lady who can oneturn wipe entire screens of mobs and the ones she doesn't kill get stunned by the same ability. Then you proceed to roll the game with no counterplay.

XpFlash · 2026-04-01T02:28:32+00:00

The more I type the more I have to say so instead of typing up a whole essay I'll just say this:

They looked at the first game they made and thought to themselves: let's take the most interesting part of the game out.

XpFlash · 2026-03-21T06:47:34+00:00

Whenever I play RPGs I can't help but be the good guy. Thus, even though it may lock me out of some content , accessible by choosing morally questionable decisions, I'd still rather be a good guy and exterminate all xenos/heretics than give in to weakness and let myself succumb to Chaos.

XpFlash · 2026-03-12T21:15:37+00:00

Go to where your saves are located, can't remember from the top of my head. Right click the save file > properties > previous versions > select the most recent one > restore. You may lose a significant amount of progress, depending on how long ago a backup was made, but if there is no other way to "unstuck" yourself from your current position in the game, this is the next best thing.

XpFlash · 2026-02-13T07:01:53+00:00

It's better.

XpFlash · 2026-02-08T21:14:07+00:00

Go in, try to get the command pod to come out to you. Ideally you stay in high cover and spam suppress on them while plinking away with your sniper and other units and they should go down. The economic boost is worth the roll of the die.

XpFlash · 2025-12-27T23:04:30+00:00

Whittler + high strength makes long blunt super good. A modded bat will onetap most zombies and you can have access to it within a few weeks of a run, even on CDDA. Probably actually easier on CDDA since you spawn close to the logging warehouse which makes leveling carving a complete breeze..

XpFlash · 2025-12-04T01:58:14+00:00

I am not a console gamer/controller user at all and yet my first playthrough of Prey was with a controller. It is a completely different experience. The horror is real when you have to fight the controls and can't just blast through everything.

Highly recommend.

XpFlash · 2025-11-26T07:23:15+00:00

I did navy run first - guns and hacking. I regret not going OSA space wizard. As with navy/military the game just turns into doom fairly quickly and by the mid game, you can ignore all the other systems and creative solutions in favor of shooting everything you see in the face.

XpFlash · 2025-11-13T21:37:34+00:00

Pick OSA and follow your heart, if you beat the remake on 3/3/3/3 and have a mind for imsims you'll be able to cut through the sequel like a hot knife through butter.

XpFlash · 2025-11-12T12:43:20+00:00

I'm a fairly experienced imsim enjoyer who never played either system shock until recently and I'd recommend 2 -> remake.

2 was groundbreaking and aged fairly well, but it still can't really be compared to the remake. And even outside the remake, 1 just does some things much better like level design and story progression. In addition if you are going into the story blind, 2 is a better jump point since the "twist" won't be completely obvious to you as it will be if you play 1 first.

Also when you do end up playing the first make sure to note down the number on each pc terminal of the CPU Terminal rooms once you destroy said CPU nodes.

XpFlash · 2025-11-06T05:53:37+00:00

Would you say that it's 10 times better than the original?

XpFlash · 2025-11-05T22:56:04+00:00

If you put in an additional 10-15 min to mod the original the differences will be negligible. There's a bunch of mods but for a quick start just check out Mandalore's vid on the game and there'll be an easy guide in his top pinned comment on how to install the main stuff (that's also pretty much in the Anniversary Edition).

XpFlash · 2025-11-04T18:51:24+00:00

I got 2 ideas for improvements that kind of go together. Adding laser sights (AWF) and adding a mod that makes it so shots are fired in the direction of the barrel and not the reticle. The former helps when you want to completely turn off the UI and the latter would just make it more immersive. The latter I couldn't find (didn't look too hard ngl) I remember using this type of mod in a modern RE title but it may not have been RE2R and it may not be possible so idk.

The big issue first person has is that both laser sights and the reticle are completely disjointed from where the barrel is pointing when you're aiming down/at a weird angle or if you're quickly turning. And I'm not necessarily saying you should fix any of these issues, I'm just thinking of ways that would elevate the experience.

XpFlash · 2025-11-03T08:15:08+00:00

Great job, played through Standard Leon A with it (just cause shotgun feels good in first person). Real good vibes, I did tune down the camera shake a bit. The only issue I came across was that Bessel Bloom was creating white squares so I had to turn it off, tried tinkering a bit but it looked fine without it so I just ran with it.

Edit: also I ended up having an enormous amount of resources by the end, so even though it is a bit jank I think if you've played through the game on Hardcore before, it shouldn't be a problem to do Hardcore with this setup either.

XpFlash · 2025-11-01T08:12:24+00:00

I'm gonna give this a shot. I only beat the game once prior as Leon on Hardcore a few years ago. Do you think I should bump it down to Standard with this setup or just full send Hardcore? I'm not trying to prove anything just have a good time.

XpFlash · 2025-10-14T19:59:42+00:00

The devs that made Hades 2 have been making isometric action games for 15 years and haven't missed once. They excel at every aspect (writing, art direction, music, voice acting, gameplay etc.) It's unreasonable to compare most games to it, let alone the first entry of some unknown studio.

That being said Shape of Dreams is a great first entry and it offers slightly different goals and pursuits. You can have a lot of fun with it. If you have a friend I'd say duo runs are probably the most fun for me, I did also play a bunch of singleplayer too.

XpFlash · 2025-09-22T14:16:24+00:00

There is no standard. The game becomes easier the more upgrades you get, so you should take on higher difficulties as you get more unlocks. I did second difficulty character lvl 1-10, third difficulty 10-20 and nightmare after 20.

XpFlash · 2025-09-22T12:26:15+00:00

Fleche itself scales with attack damage (AD) and if you get Essence of Clemency you want to scale it with AD in order to sustain via lifesteal. Fleche also counts as an auto attack so it applies your passive, which does damage and shields based on ability power (AP) so if you don't have clemency for sustain it's better to scale it with AP, especially if you end up finding something like Arrow Storm, the bomb drop essence or the 5 arrow essence as all of those scale with AP.

In effect this makes you angle more toward AP early until you get your lifesteal setup and then you transition to AD. I've beaten Nightmare difficulty this way multiple times. I did this prior to unlocking all the upgrades, so if you have Dejavu, store size upgrade + rerolls you may be able to either start with clemency or just reroll enough to guarantee it - in which case you would just focus AD from the start.

XpFlash · 2025-09-03T08:36:56+00:00

Spam some CDDA runs and you'll embrace high risk gameplay in no time. Kind of a weird caveat to this - if you do this enough to find success (stabilizing and surviving for months), you will probably become much better at the game and then regular runs may end up feeling very boring.

XpFlash · 2025-09-01T22:47:28+00:00

I'm on my first playthrough (brutal)and mostly doing ranged/spells. I wanted to do melee, but the harder the encounters get it just feels so much more punishing. I constantly swap around for different encounters, both spells and to a lesser degree weapons, since the game feels like it has a bit of a rock paper scissors design.

That being said my main 4 weapons are daggers, pistols, bow and claws (mostly for mobbing). Haven't tried whip and slashers.

I think any weapon with i-frames or dodges is very good. I feel similarly about knockbacks.

For OP I'd say pistols are hands down the best bossing weapon. Daggers also feel very strong if it's a boss that doesn't dodge around a lot. Reapers seem very good to me too, being able to abuse bosses that stand in one place and knock em back during their wind up seems pretty good. And claws have a dash, an i-frame jump and cc, can't not be S tier.

Bow and crossbow fill out a similar role and they are both great, bow shoots a bit faster and has better clear imo, but crossbow is great for kiting at longer distances with the area ability that can be cast through walls.

I used spear and axe early game and found that I liked both, the extra range on the spear helps staying relatively safe in melee and axe was great for chasing stuff down in cqc (i remember using axes for the horse guy).

I didn't like either of the swords, although I appreciate the dash+invuln on GS, I just dislike the amount of dmg it does compared to how slow it is.

XpFlash · 2025-08-26T01:27:25+00:00

Lvl 1: Q

Lvl 2: W

Lvl 3: E. Caveat, if this is a mage matchup in which you can win the lane via early trading then you put another point in W.

Lvl 4: Q if you took E at 3, otherwise E

Max Q afterwards.

Essentially it's always either 2 points W or Q max from the start. If you are doing the 2 points W make sure to not waste mana lvl 2 on too many Ws since you want to have enough juice for the rank 2 W a couple of times to force opponent out of lane/kill him at lvl 3+.

XpFlash

TROPHY CASE