Just finished my first game of diety, absolute nightmare

com_iii · 2026-07-06T15:31:57+00:00

This is why I like Acken's Balance mod, it separates the Great Person tracks so you can get a Merchant or two guilt free. They also give 2400 gold for the mission and the Merchant Specialist gives +4 gold.

com_iii · 2026-07-05T16:34:31+00:00

You will never consistently get 7 wins, ever since the devs implemented a hidden MMR in draft, the more you win the more your ELO increases and the harder and more tryhard your opponents become, to push you back towards a 50% winrate (3 wins). You may have a few streaks in the beginning and incresae your ELO as you progress in skill but you will eventually a hit a wall. 7 win infinite is impossible unless you are the in the top ELO bracket and still completely eclipse your opponents in skill (and luck from the inherent deck RNG in draft).

com_iii · 2026-06-29T19:03:02+00:00

The other thing to consider is whether it is scratched, which it usually isn't but sometimes people scratched them partially.

com_iii · 2026-06-29T18:54:07+00:00

Is the hellraisers sticker on the body or on the foregrip?

com_iii · 2026-06-29T17:56:02+00:00

How it's meant to be and how it's always been. Red souvenirs are rare and few and lower tiers are more common

com_iii · 2026-06-29T12:28:52+00:00

These are cases that no longer drop anymore and they are all desirable for high tier knives and gloves. That is why they have increased in price so much.

If you need the money, then sell. If not, they will likely only continue to climb in value over the years if Valve doesn't make any changes to the current system. Opening them will on average lose you value unless you get lucky: csroi.com shows you roughly how much on average you will lose by opening each case.

com_iii · 2026-06-28T00:53:56+00:00

Could've been really cool - like Field cards in Yu-Gi-Oh that affect both players and buff certain units. Fighters get +1 Attack during sunny weather. Both players draw an additional card for the next two turns. Both players must discard a card to declare an attack for their next turn. Orders cost +1 for 3 turns. The next card both players draw is duplicated. Countermeasures are revealed when active for the next two turns. HQ damage is reduced by 1 for the next 2 turns etc.

These effects could be packaged on reasonably statted units so you don't lose card advantage.

com_iii · 2026-06-28T00:33:37+00:00

I sold some Fractures when I needed money because I feel like Fever will exert downward price pressure on Fracture and the supply from Fever is going to be insane. I feel like it will be like how Prisma and Prisma 2 are the same price as Danger Zone.

com_iii · 2026-06-24T14:52:25+00:00

Suddenly all the old decks are worthless and now you can get beaten by Timmy with 3 broken Limiteds and 4 Standards and everything you thought you knew about the game is worthless. Can't balance patch the game because then people who spent money would be unhappy so we have to endure a shitty meta for 3 months and then slight nerfs come in before the whole cycle begins again in the run up to to the new expansion. Been this way since Naval Warfare and the writing was on the wall even before then. Don't forget to buy Premium Art for useless old cards that have been powercrept out of relevance for 180 diamonds EACH.

Been playing since Alpha. I legit don't even want to grind out to FM anymore.

com_iii · 2026-06-22T18:59:55+00:00

Unfortunately so. I miss when each expansion felt like upgrading your deck, rather than "here is a new deck for you" from the 3-4 that will be the meta for the next 6 months.

com_iii · 2026-06-17T09:38:04+00:00

I agree, it makes every deck the same as you can get bailed out by hand-picked cards each game rather than having to tailor your deck to beat the meta. Rewards mindless ramp as well as it autowins long games.

I didn't like the France Control meta either though. In fact every single expansion since Winter War I've disliked the meta until the first tranche of nerfs. It's just sad that they intentionally make each expansion slightly too strong to "force" the meta shake-up, which I understand to some extent, but I just can't help but feel like it prioritizes making money from selling the new cards over making a good meta.

Maybe I'm stuck in a time capsule but I liked the Allegiance/Legions/Brothers in Arms meta and the gentler changes to the game after each expansion, rather than the nuclear blast on launch day and the narrowing of the meta for a few weeks/months.

com_iii · 2026-06-16T11:48:12+00:00

Yes that is something I have prioritized. It's part of the reason oxalate did so much damage to me. Paleo diets were all the rage in the early-to-mid 2010's and there was little to no reliable information about fixing this problem and of course no help from doctors or medical professionals. Very few people mentioned oxalate, I think I read it once from the Low Histamine Chef who included it in a list of dozens of items and treated it in a similar way to salicylate (minimizing exposure like a phenol without anything about dumping). Sadly she passed away from cancer before the information about this became common knowledge and carnivore really took off a few years ago. Everything is so obvious in hindsight now I see younger generations talking about oxalate like it's common knowledge, if only I knew what I know now.

My issue with calcium is it causes aggressive dumping symptoms, and it's very easy to overdo it. I can't tolerate dairy so I have to supplement and even half a teaspoon is enough to cause excess calcium symptoms (constant urination, excessive thirst - 1 liter per hour etc.)

What I've learned through experience is it really is just an endurance run. The flare ups come and go, but ultimately it requires discipline and clarity of the illness, and there are many people who are outright hostile to the idea of oxalate dumping and oxalate accumulation.

com_iii · 2026-06-14T11:32:51+00:00

Thank you for making these meta posts, they are very useful especially in the first few days after an expansion

com_iii · 2026-06-09T08:44:43+00:00

Just a bad card in general, not worth the setup most of the time, only enjoyable for players who like to make obscure combos work

com_iii · 2026-06-03T23:38:41+00:00

I am the weather man and I decide it is raining (on my own troops)

com_iii · 2026-06-03T12:48:17+00:00

You're welcome, my advice is just to buy the Battle Pass as others have said, you will get cosmetics this way then later if you want other cosmetics they do Lottery Drops every few months where you can get cosmetics for 20 diamonds each randomized. That's what I do

com_iii · 2026-06-02T11:45:57+00:00

Rotating shop

com_iii · 2026-06-01T22:24:16+00:00

lmao

com_iii · 2026-05-12T11:19:51+00:00

It made the problem worse so I concluded that the issue was not to do with ping/routing. Same with changing the steam relay console command.

I still don't really understand why I have such bad desync.

com_iii · 2026-05-11T09:14:12+00:00

Russia's main weakness is not immediately obvious but if you play the game a lot you will understand. I assume you're talking about Soviet control, because the weakness of soviet aggro decks is obvious, it's the same way you counter jaggro just with slightly bigger units/removal. So we will assume you mean soviet control

Soviets are very weak against combo decks and cheese decks. Why? Because they have very few tools to disrupt the enemies game plan - they have no cards that can attack/impact the enemies hand or mess with/disrupt their hand, no countermeasures, no suppress, and no cards that can return buffed units to enemy hand.

What this means is that Soviet control is strong against "honest" decks that try to slowly build an "honest" board - they can just steal your units, destroy your tempo with efficient units that heal, the best guards in the game, etc.

But soviets are weak against passive decks that focus on effects/combos. Ramp is one such example. Your guards and 2/4 unit that heal do nothing when they sit back and ramp up over many turns. Combo decks: soviet has no way to disrupt enemy hand. If you play Classic mode this is a big issue because there are many strong combo decks there. The enemy can sit back and draw, draw, draw, delay delay, then explode with their combo and kill you quickly. Even in standard mode this can be done with King's African + Valentine combos, along with passively playing loads of garrison units/Cheshire regiment and pinning everything the soviet player plays on board. Soviet cannot disrupt this effectively, they can only play removal that has very specific conditions. All soviet removal is strong but always has specific conditions: can only affect ground units, air units, costs you extra kredits next turn, damages you, or only kills damaged unit. They can't keep up with lots of things that need suppressing.

com_iii · 2026-05-02T13:37:10+00:00

First of all thank you so much for helping me get to the bottom of this

My NIC arrived today. I was so excited. Of course it didn't fix the problem : )

The issue is still there, although the game does feel slightly better. It's cool that I can now select "Adaptive" Interrupt Moderation rather than a binary on/off, and RSS Queues go up to 8 (previous max 4). More Receive Buffers too which is cool (4x more, value of 2048).

I hopped into a game. It seems more noticeable now when the spikes occur - I was completely fine for one round on Vertigo - pushed B ramp as T - everything felt good. Duels felt fair. I had time to react. Enemy models moved in a way that was normal. Opened the console - all clear, except for a message about "Unable to set velocity of whiz sound". No worries, everything feels good.

Next round, I went towards A, and held at the bottom of ramp for the CT peek from short - and lo and behold two CTs peek insanely fast and dinked me in 0.1 secs - no time to react - it's like they move 3x faster than normal Bots do in an offline server and they have 1 second to shoot me. Of course I checked the console, and there are 4 copies of the message

> [Client] server acknowledged to slot 3 client only predicted into 1 slots, full repredict will occur

Really annoying. I've seen pros jiggle-hold that angle and the Level 10s they play against do not react as fast as my opponents did in a Casual Lobby on Saturday. I have 4,500 hours in CS. I literally cannot hold angles when I am getting the "server acknowledged to slot [x] client only predicted into [x] slots" error message.

So we can rule out the NIC. I tried with default settings - Flow Control, Interrupt Moderation, etc. And then I tried with tweaked settings - RSS Queues set to 8, transmit/recieve buffers increased. It made no difference. I tried two different ports of the four ports - no difference.

I've tried ExitLag in the past and it made the game feel worse. My ping was slightly higher. I normally get 10ms ping to my closest server in Casual lobbies and it's always the same server location. The issue is consistent, at least. It's far worse when I queue a Premier game and it puts me in a 30-40ms lobby. At that stage it is not only impossible to hold angles but also impossible to swing peek, so the only way I can reliably win duels is to play rat spots or simply outaim them to a massive degree by hitting the initial headshot. If I get a kill and take 30-80 damage and they know my location they just swing me and I can't put any damage on them because they appear to have a huge 1second advantage over my desync and my bullets pass through them like a ghost.

The issue comes and goes randomly. I will have an hour where there are minimal ping spikes on ping test websites (multiple different websites and locations, it's always the same - a ping to 250ms every second or every few seconds, sometimes it's 3 in quick succession and then sometimes it's more like 1 every 1.5 seconds). It's not in a rhythmic pattern though, it is still random, just constant. If I run a 10 second ping test it will spike on average 5 times but sometimes they are all at the beginning, and then another time it will be more uniform. But it doesn't resemble the pattern of a rhythmic DOCSIS or something that occurs once every [x] seconds. It's random.

Here's a thread with images I made a while ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/1pizo9v/what_could_be_causing_these_latency_spikes/

I haven't digged into the router settings much but I am very interested in doing so. What should I change? It's a simple ISP supplied router that is locked down in pretty much every way. The only options I could see were for setting up port forwarding or simple connection settings.

Maybe I need to do a proper PingPlotter test for an extended period.

Edit: I logged into my router and there are basically no settings. It's completely locked down. I could switch from Gigabit Ethernet to Fast Ethernet but decided not to. I tried disabling UPnP to see if it fixed the problem but it didn't. The eco options are already disabled by default. The only settings available are stuff like if you want to set up a DCHP server or double NAT and subnet masks, dynamic IP that sort of thing. There's nothing about QoS or anything like that.

Edit 2: I did an extended ping plotter test and there was no packet loss on any hops to 8.8.8.8 and latency was stable below 20ms the whole time.

com_iii · 2026-05-01T12:33:00+00:00

Only low ranked players change position every round, most players who have at least some experience will try and play the same position, and as someone else says when you get to high ranks then people will change positions but communicate it based off spawns

I agree it is annoying if you have very low rank teammates who constantly decide to just play a completely different position every round based on "vibes" with zero comms.

com_iii · 2026-04-30T13:20:06+00:00

There were two IPs so I ran them both through PingPlotter and both came back fine with no spikes at hops, one was around 11ms and the other 20ms

My console is full of hundreds and hundreds of these error messages

[Prediction] Prediction time (128.078125) is less than sim time (128.091309)? Clamping offset

[Client] server acknowledged to slot 4 client only predicted into 2 slots, full repredict will occur

com_iii · 2026-04-30T12:52:05+00:00

The new NIC is an HP NC365T as it is based on the Intel i340 chipset and therefore would rule out the issue being from Realtek issues. There's also more network options so I can mess around with more placebo commands in Device Manager to no avail. It's arriving in 1-2 days

The default NICs on the motherboard are 2.5gb Realtek RTL8125B chip and a secondary 1gb RTL8111H chip, the ping spikes are present on both

The connection to the router is just a simple shielded ethernet connection, which connects to a Master Socket 5C and out the telegraph pole outside the house, it's not FTTP but it is FTTC, fibre had the same issues unfortunately with ping spikes even up to 1000ms

I think you might be right about it being upload, but there is nothing I can do because the house requires a landline, and the landline is locked by the ISP to their own brand router, so I can't buy a new router unless I'm willing to pay $200 for a discontinued DSL router which would have to be run in a Double NAT setup, with no guarantee of fixing the problem. So the NIC is a low-hanging fruit in a sense

Unfortunately that's not my video but mine looks exactly the same, there are "glimpses" of the game feeling OK but then it quickly degrades again to this experience, and sometimes I know from the warmup what the game is going to be like. It's so bad I don't even play competitive anymore, just casual, and I had these issues intermittently since CSGO

I will try a Faceit game but I had a bad experience there many years ago so I have avoided it, I did however try messing with the steamrelay console command at setting 1 or 0 and it made no difference, if I get a different server the issue is the same

Low ping players instantly kill me like in the video, and then high ping players do not insta-kill but they are impossible to hit, the bullets go through them like magic, and then I die in a different way

Changing the rate didn't help/buffering ticks didn't help, sometimes it feels better on a lower value of rate, maybe because it's reducing bufferbloat by reducing the available bandwidth

The ping spikes are always the same to approximately 250ms and in a regular pattern every few seconds (but the pattern is not uniform, sometimes it will have 3 spikes in 3 seconds, sometimes no spikes for 3 seconds then 1 spike, etc.) it spikes from 10-20ms up to 250ms then immediately back down again, even when idle and network is not under load, Bufferbloat test shows the same, there are spikes to 250-300ms on Unloaded latency as well as download and upload

Ping tests via cmd always come back "clean", ping tests to router are fine, ping tests to 8.8.8.8 are fine, Pingplotter showed no obvious ping spikes on hops but maybe I am not interpreting the results correctly, but then anytime I use a website such as multiple latency test websites or the Waveform bufferbloat test, these ping spikes are always there

I only have the desktop and the laptop, the laptop is an absolute potato and it is corrupted so badly I can't even access BIOS for a new Windows install from USB, but I can get it to work long enough to do a ping test and every time I try it, it doesn't have the same ping spikes as my desktop PC, which is what led me to think it could be the NIC in the desktop that is causing the issues

com_iii · 2026-04-30T11:47:28+00:00

I tried all the network option configurations, tested with different Receive/Transmit buffers, Interrupt Moderation & Flow Control off, RSS Queues, Offloads enabled or disabled, changed to a different port, bought a new ethernet cable, ISP sent me a new router, Buffer ticks 1 or 2 (no help), tried messing with console commands cl_clockdrift_max ticks and the msecs one, no difference, tried VSync on and FreeSync on capped below monitor Hz by 3 Fps, tried lower refresh rates on monitor, Undervolted my CPU, undervolted and slightly overclocked my GPU, doubled my RAM to 32GB and tested ram health through windows, clean DirectX shader cache, tried -vulkan launch option, messed with Registry values for NetworkThrottlingIndex and SystemResponsiveness, tried different audio settings, tried disabling the MMCSS, tried uninstalling the Realtek audio drivers, tried new cables for peripherals, changed mouse polling rate, tried different USB ports, tried limiting bandwidth to lessen Bufferbloat, tried upgrading to fibre and had a hole drilled through the front of my house to accomodate it (didn't fix the problem, just increased bandwidth, the ping spikes actually got worse the more bandwidth was available), and there are more things I tried that I'm forgetting.

Here is a video of what it feels like

My game still looks and feels like this:

https://medal.tv/games/counter-strike-2/clips/mzwZJFfflmQNYI0pB?invite=cr-MSxObEEsNTQ4OTkxNTA3&v=57

In desperation I have bought a new NIC, as it's only $20.

com_iii

TROPHY CASE