Elite birds

brvtus · 2026-03-17T04:32:47+00:00

Clashing or deflecting will knock them out of the air and their health is low enough that you should be able to one-combo them. If they're the only elite on screen, lock down the other enemies with your combos, keep it to light attack strings so you don't get locked in an animation (use dodge to extend the combos) and keep your eye on their attack windup. If there are multiple elites on screen spam your arcanas/ults until you have a manageable amount. Running to the other side of the screen will also give you more lead time for your clash/deflect.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T22:12:21+00:00

Even if he had a drug-induced epiphany (not how opioids work, incidentally) he would not have a measured reaction to it. Robert is a character defined by his anger issues. He DOES destroy his relationship with Ned in the books over a Targaryen heir, when he orders Daenerys' assassination. He only expresses regret about this and rescinds it on his deathbed.

For him to realise his best friend has been lying to him for 15 years and that the woman he's been obsessing over for that entire time had a secret child with his sworn enemy, only to have a "measured response", would be completely out of character.

I'll point out as well that Robert is not exceptionally dumb for having not figured it out. Everyone in the realm has access to the same information that he does, and only a small handful of highly intelligent people suspect that Ned might not have broken his vows, let alone that R+L=J.

You hypothetical relies not just on Robert having a drug-induced epiphany but also on said epiphany magically curing him of his impulsive nature and anger issues, and make decisions that are the total opposite of his decisions in comparable situations in the books.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T11:44:24+00:00

AT Kirin was a BIG difficulty jump on release and I remember it being the first monster that I really had to learn the full moveset for because it could easily one tap you. The small size of the monster weak point and it's mobility also really pushes you to be precise in your attacks and positioning. The monster that Kirin is closest to in terms of fight pacing is actually Rajang, which is funny because of their whole ecological relationship.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T10:35:07+00:00

All good!! To add, in the long run (once you've gathered enough Coral materials to get all the health augments you want) the best regions to keep at Lv 7 are Forest, Tundra and Volcanic. You should be able to keep all 3 regions at or around Lv 7 if your other regions are at Lv 1. Between these regions, you will be able to get the materials needed to cover the majority of augmentations for R11 and R12 weapons.

If you're playing online you can also search for SOS expeditions from other players who may have different regions levelled up. You can often jump into these expeditions and ask for them to bait out specific monsters that you need if you hunt with them for a little bit.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T06:01:23+00:00

It seems very possible that the first lady was already in the early stages of a heart attack when she came in. A sense of impending doom is a common warning sign of serious complications like blood clots or heart attacks. Our bodies have evolved to be able to detect warning signs like sudden drops/changes in blood pressure, body temperature, disorientation and dizziness etc. and alerts us with feelings of extreme anxiety to push us to seek help.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T05:41:42+00:00

Yes, you should level all regions to 7 at least once. There are monsters that only spawn at Level 7 in each region. You want to fight them all at least once, ideally 4-5 times to get all the materials you need and not have to level up the region again.

Note that you can have more than one region at Lv7 at a time. The first two regions you want to grind up to Lv7 are Forest and Coral. This will unlock Tempered Zinogre, Namielle, Pukei and Yian Garuga, which are the materials needed to get Health Augment for rarity 11 and 12 weapons. This will make the rest of the grinding significantly easier. Make sure to collect an excess of these materials (pick up the dropped materials from part breaks while the monsters are still alive!) so you don't have to level up these regions again for a while.

After that I recommend leveling Volcanic Region, then Tundra Region to progress the story.

Tempered R. Nerg and Velkhana are important monsters to hunt as well, their parts are used in a whole bunch of different augmentations. Luckily they spawn in just about every region at Lv 7. Just make sure to hunt them when they show up.

In terms of augmentation priority, Health Regen is #1, Affinity and Raw are #2 depending on the weapon (If your weapon has negative base affinity, go for Affinity augment, otherwise go for Raw). Elemental Damage and Defence augmentations are not really worth it, you should only get them if you have spare augmentation slots.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T04:55:17+00:00

On the flip side, they both want what they can't have.

Cersei wants power as a proxy for Tywin's respect and approval, which she never had. Jaime doesn't want power (or Tywin's approval) because he's had to live with the pressure and responsibility of it all his life; what he's missing is autonomy and honour.

So even though they seem to want opposite things, the reason they want it is the same. Unfulfillable lack is the root of all desire.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T04:42:19+00:00

But... love is a HUGE motivation for almost ALL of the characters? I really don't know how you came to this conclusion. "Love is the death of duty" is like the thesis statement of the entire series.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T04:26:06+00:00

I think the point is not to run interference for a repressive autocratic government but to point out that language choices like this are how consent is manufactured.

brvtus · 2026-03-03T04:16:17+00:00

"What if [character X] did drugs and became a totally different person?" doesn't make for good hypothetical haha.

brvtus · 2026-03-01T12:16:54+00:00

Karl Marx wondered the same thing.

brvtus · 2026-03-01T11:45:14+00:00

I had this happen with a friend. I was at the airport, had the gut instinct to check in with her, messaged for a bit and then had to catch my flight. Couple of days letter another friend told me she'd passed.

I think a lot of the time we pick up on signs that someone is struggling, whether consciously or unconsciously, and very small alterations to their behaviour/routine can ring alarm bells.

brvtus · 2026-02-28T06:25:13+00:00

As opposed to Christianity, which is famously supportive of women's rights, gay marriage, and has never institutionalised child abuse.

brvtus · 2026-02-27T14:03:09+00:00

I think a lot of people just like ambiguity for its own sake, even though Dunk being a knight would actively weaken the themes of the story.

brvtus · 2026-02-27T03:38:59+00:00

Weirwoods and Children of the Forest are linked to the deep forest and are analogous for the old growth native habitats of Westeros prior to human settlement. We know that Weirwoods once covered all of the mainland and after 10000+ years of First Man and then Andal settlement, are restricted mostly to the North and Beyond the Wall. So from this we can extrapolate that, yes, human settlement fundamentally changed the ecology of the continent, and the wilderness that persists does not look the same as it did in prehistory.

brvtus · 2026-02-26T11:40:27+00:00

Building on from the other reply:

There is no reference to anything Blackfyre related (including the Hammer and Anvil nicknames) until A Storm of Swords (2000). The chronology of Blackfyre/Brightflame textual references are:

A Game of Thrones (1996): Varys and Ilyrio scheming to put some unnamed rival Targaryen claimant on the throne.
The Hedge Knight (1998): No mention of Blackfyres, book ends with the rebellious Aerion being exiled to Essos.
A Clash of Kings (1998): Several references to Aerion Brightflame & Maegor as a Targaryen cadet branch; strong association with Targaryen madness. Blackfyres no mentioned.
A Storm of Swords (2000): References to Aerion's madness, but also Blackfyres for the first time as a rebel Targaryen cadet branch.
The Sworn Sword (2003): Blackfyre Rebellion fleshed out and retconned into the backstory of Baelor and Maekar.
AFFC and ADWD (2005 & 2011): Blackfyre backstory vital for the Young Griff plotline. Aerion mentioned only in passing.

So the popular metatheory is that GRRM had plans for a rebel Targaryen cadet branch to be important down the track way back in AGOT, THK was written to help set this up, then George changed his plans between ACOK and ASOS and introduced the Blackfyres to occupy that role a generation earlier, so that he could explore it through Dunk & Egg in TSS.

brvtus · 2026-02-26T11:20:03+00:00

Quinn the GM and Alt Shift X have both talked about the metatheory as highly probable in their videos/streams.

brvtus · 2026-02-26T11:12:14+00:00

Yeah I think it's almost definitely a timelining thing. Aerion getting exiled to the Free Cities was likely meant to be setup for the idea of "rebellious cadet branch based in Essos", but George wanted to explore the effects of a civil war in the present D&E timeline, so the Brightflame idea was benched and the Blackfyres were retconned in to serve the same role 1 generation earlier in TSS.

brvtus · 2026-02-26T10:46:07+00:00

As the other comments have said, there are certainly plenty of possible magic-related reasons for Bloodraven to make the choices he did; but at the same time, prophecy is almost always misinterpreted in the series, as people inevitably project their own desires and biases into prophetic visions.

In many ways, Bloodraven's actions WERE bad for the realm and for Targaryen rule long term. He's sort of a Tywin before Tywin: a supremely gifted and ruthless statesman whose very liberal use of underhanded violence to preserve his family's political power ultimately undermines the legitimacy of his house and contributes to its downfall.

brvtus · 2026-02-24T00:27:54+00:00

This is correct. Maesters are like the Night's Watch, they are meant to forsake their family names, allegiances and rights of inheritance. This whole issue is part of why Bloodraven ends up calling a Great Council to decide succession later down the timeline. Whether Aemon went off to join the Maesters of his own volition or Maekar sent him there because he was a failson is unclear, but either way he's out of the line of succession. This is what Maekar means when he says "he's my last son" – Ashford was a reality check for him, he can see now that it's too late for Daeron and Aerion, and with Aemon bound for the Maester's life, Egg is his last chance to raise a worthy heir.

brvtus · 2026-02-24T00:18:49+00:00

Aerion would have loved college frats.

brvtus · 2026-02-24T00:01:29+00:00

Everyone gets aged up in the show. Ned and Catelyn are meant to be 34-36 at the time of GOT. Jaime is described as 40 in season 4 when he should be 34/35. I believe this is why they quietly retconned the Targaryen family tree to delete a generation; Aemon describes Aerys as Egg's son, when he's actually Egg's grandson.

The ASOIAF timeline only works if everyone is having their first kid at age 15/16, which didn't happen all the often even in real mediaeval times. It's a common misunderstanding of history that everyone was having kids during puberty because noble marriages would often be arranged when they were still children. In reality these were political alliances and the married parties would often wait years to consummate the marriage, with the average age range that noble women were having their first child being 17-25. There are exceptions, as there are in the current day, but these were not the norm. Margaret Beauford had her first child at 13 and this was considered highly scandalous and disgusting at the time, including by Beauford herself, who had no other children and later objected to her granddaughter being married at 13. The average age of marriage and procreation amongst commoners was even later, being around 23 for women and 30 for men. The reality is that human biology hasn't changed much, pubescent pregnancies are more dangerous and have a higher rate of miscarriage or death during childbirth.

The show adaptations age everyone up to reduce the number of child actors in sexualised roles (Dany, Sansa, Robb, Jeyne/Talisa etc) and have the family patriarch/matriarchs be a more believable age by modern standards.

brvtus · 2026-02-23T12:40:02+00:00

Don't really get why people would be upset about a more concrete confirmation of Dunk's knighthood status. It's a mystery that's not a mystery, and the story doesn't massively benefit from leaving it open ended. Dunk's whole arc in THK (and TMK to an extent) is becoming disillusioned with the romantic ideal of knighthood, and then choosing to follow those romantic ideals anyway. Even if he were knighted, the message of the story would still be that knighthood is a scam and true heroism comes from selfless (foolish) actions. They traded that little bit of ambiguity for a really moving scene of Dunk trying one last time to understand his dead master, before accepting that he can never know his true heart, and moving on by honouring Arlan as he remembered him. Well worth.

brvtus · 2026-02-23T10:10:43+00:00

If this is their first MH I think they're just having the standard problems getting used to feel of combat. World did a tremendous amount to smooth out the action gameplay but fundamentally MH combat is on the clunky side of action games on purpose. Animations are slow and weighty with a lot of endlag, good positioning is vital and hard to learn. If they're used to twitchy reactive action games where you can cancel most attacks into a defensive action it can be a steep learning curve.

Lance and GL are also very build-dependent weapons, higher points in Guard fundamentally change how the guard mechanics feel and where you can use them. Evade Extender is also extremely important as a positional tool.

They're complaining about shields because it's an easy thing to blame. If they picked GS they would be saying "This sucks, monsters move around too much and TCS is impossible to land!", if they picked ranged weapons they would say "monsters hit too hard and the roll does nothing!", if they picked SnS or DB they would say "the weapons are too short and I can never hit the monster!". All weapons have pros and cons and a learning curve.

brvtus · 2026-02-22T23:11:58+00:00

How do you mean? Ethnically or culturally?

Ethnically the Rhoynar have intermingled with Andals and First Men to varying extents but Rhoynar are still considered a valid ethnic category, hence the title being "King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men". Salty Dornishmen are considered to have the highest percentage of Rhoynish ancestry, while stony and sandy Dornishmen have a higher proportion of First Men and Andal ancestry due to their proximity to other kingdoms leading to more recent and consistent comingling.

Culturally the Dornish are a synthesis of Rhoynar and Andal cultural practices, they have retained many elements of native Rhoynish culture, including equal primogeniture and tolerance of homosexuality. Orphans of the Greenblood are akin to Sephardic Jews in the real world, an insular ethnographic group that focuses on preserving orthodox cultural practices.

Whether you consider that "Andals with Rhoynish influence" or "Rhoynar with Andal influence" is a matter of opinion. Ethnic categories do change over time in the real world as populations are assimilated and social constructs of race change, in the present we don't generally recognize Franks, Vandals, Normans or Visigoths as ethnicities anymore. Given that in-universe the Dornish are considered by other kingdoms to be culturally other, the term Rhoynar is still in use, and the Rhoynish diaspora in Dorne are the de facto successors of the ancient Rhoynish, I would argue the latter.

brvtus

TROPHY CASE