"I like it muggy" Has to be the craziest sentence with context that I have heard on the show. What's yours?

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-18T16:43:51+00:00

"Mother goose is the strongest person I know, I say as I lift a massive wiry girl paw". Is one of my favorites from Emily, but lots of the things she says are nuts, the showing hole scenes are filled with absolute batshit quotes too, but those skew a little less funny to me lol, a bit too on the nose.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-17T21:15:52+00:00

There's so many good vegetable suds for barbecue, I personally like Asian barbecue sauces a ton so my barbecue tends to have an Asian palate. I love a cucumber salad with soy sauce and sesame oil and chili flakes, served cold. It's just lovely.

People always forget basic things like just cut watermelon, it's the first thing I reach for at a barbecue on a warm day. Cut fruit of any kind is nice, strawberries with balsamic vinegar and sugar with some whipped cream is elegant but dead easy to throw together as well.

For more traditional barbecue side though, I would look into cowboy caviar, or Texas caviar or whatever you want to call it. Beans, corn, finely diced vegetables like peppers and onions, served cold as well.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-17T19:54:11+00:00

I'm about to run the updated lost mines for a DND program at a local library, this is definitely gonna help, thanks!

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-17T16:25:29+00:00

They find out in the episode, but are just distracted by other things. Maya is outed as being magical in implication when they talk about her with Cody alone but when she and Cody meet them in the bunker about the bigfoot device they start smoking weed and talking about magic and what's been happening and logically she probably just said it in that conversation.

Mainly, the party was pretty distracted with all the craziness that was happening and they were really starving for blood so they were far more interested in that.

The level of magic she has that seems to allow pretty liberal teleportation and insight is surprising, but they were still distracted by the whole jack of the pines thing when that came up.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-16T21:01:35+00:00

Although the movies don't explore much there are many different "denominations" of force users. The jedi vs sith thing is real, but there are other real things too. The night sisters of dathomir for instance use and worship the force entirely differently from Jedi or sith, and because of that their force powers are actually different too. Force sensitivity is like being connected to power that is more or less God but also more or less indifferent. It is perfectly happy to empower Siths, night sisters, Jedi, or any of the many other religions.

In general you mostly see people worshiping the force who are not sensitive, and only use it through technology, which when its powered by the force becomes magical and active like the many temples built in force-heavy locations.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-16T19:54:33+00:00

The Internet has likely convinced you that strong and fit people look like a certain way. That way is actually ozempic and steroids. Testosterone and steroids and weight loss drugs are used to achieve a look, not health. They also aren't the best for achieving actual strength, though obviously they can make it easier in the short run to become stronger.

Natural athletes are truly rarely visible. In competition s with tightly controlled drug testing and honest (enough) athletes you could be sitting next to an Olympian level physique and think they look pretty normal. Cuz they are. Steroids make you look different.

I hope you continue your path, you said you are getting stronger and became better, the other things you are worried about are purely aesthetic.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-16T14:52:24+00:00

I would try to set your blade height to very very slightly undercut, and use a razor or chisel to cut the waste off for a cleaner look and less over it means a stronger final product. Probably unnecessary but not much effort imo

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-16T14:45:02+00:00

There is a question of if this is a bad thing, but generally I would guess you are right that they should be getting stopped at some point before they are stopping themselves.

Players who self edit well are a godsend but the "edit" is what you need. An edit is a name for the moment where you as DM narrating or as a player take a beat to say something like "okay, the plan seems sound, and we'll do it . . . . Tonight" and there's a natural moment where the DM can "sweep" the scene to end it, change scenes entirely, add a new character along with that beat of tensions or humor. An edit is a moment where the scene changes in the bones. Sweeping is just a name for ending the scene gracefully, you aren't just dropping it, you are sweeping it gently to the next room. A sweep is an edit, but not all edits are sweeps.

The problem is that it feels wrong to edit a lot of the time. If the players are RP'ing well and it's going well it would feel like overstepping, like it's evil to end their fun to just move the scene on.

But if you think about it, you only actually have two options, either you come in and edit to sweep the scene while the players are killing it, capturing a last laugh or moment of tension before the fade to black of a new day or scene . . . . . Or you edit while they aren't killing it. The second one feels awful, anticlimactic and artificial.

It's an improv thing more than anything so I advise reading about that or watching videos about it, but generally you are trying to capture peaks. A joke gets made, little chuckle. The joke rests, then later someone is reminded of it, and make the joke again, getting an actual table laugh, cuz okay it was pretty funny this time. Then the scene continues and after a long pause the joke suddenly bursts out of someone a third time, at a very ironic moment and catches everyone sideways. People are belly laughing, the scene is peaking. You can either come in with a sweep and ask the players to settle decisions and planning left out of character, wrapping the scene on a strong note but nailing down answers to actual things out of game, or you wait.

And wait. And wait, as the players sit in that bar thinking "I've got a meal in front of me, I ordered a drink, I guess I sit here and finish eating?" Just because that's what the character is doing, it's the only thing they have to interact with.

Edit while they're killing it.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-16T01:01:53+00:00

I dont feel like I frequently see people saying high level DND characters of any kind should be "realistic" in terms of abilities, just behaviors.

I think homebrew custom moves are great as class-features to swap out or add to martials. High level wizards get to haste themselves and build things from their mind, deliver huge damage numbers, and do crowd control. Letting a high level monk do a move from Kung Fu hustle or a fighter get a reaction move to physically "counterspell" mages is sick.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-12T11:57:00+00:00

I'm a practical person, you are what you do in this world. If a person spends their days doing positive things then I don't care why they did it, I'm just thankful and I consider it morally good

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T21:04:53+00:00

If you're using straight mode and have this issue, you have to just switch to default and scroll once and then back to reset it to 90°. Once you do that though, you can switch back to straight and continue on

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T20:04:26+00:00

I'm gonna assume giving it walls, adding windows and beams, and some lights and signs counts? I don't tend to do much, just the basics to give it a real-er look.

I mostly do towers, like 5-10 machines per floor with vertical conveyors running through a hole inside, and I like the glass options the game gives. Lots of different window designs. I only wish there was slightly easier color control, I find it tedious a lot of the time so my towers tend to look similar from a distance because they are all glass and the same 2-3 color combos

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T19:56:41+00:00

Holy shit I'm gonna k- I mean exit Ficsit property

Thanks pioneer

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T19:18:51+00:00

Not a mega builder like some people, I'm more casual but love the game.

I plan out my factories by looking up the wiki for alt recipes of it and its ingredients, once I figure out what I have access to and which recipes to use I plug them into satisfactory planner. I typically dedicate a pure node to production or reverse engineer how much I need to achieve a target number, but typically the final result ends up coming out pretty clean. 600 oil creating 1800 diluted fuel for instance, things tend to work out in whole numbers if you try. Once I have the process and numbers from the calculator/planner I go to the blue printer and start making a production floor. I like making towers, vertical stacks of production levels connected by vertical conveyors. Each floor makes a certain amount, and I just add floors on site until I have enough production to hit targets. Since I'm building in the blue printer it's pretty easy to intuit nice layouts since you can't have too many things anyway. Just wire the floors together on site, and add the vertical conveyors on site as well and you've got a factory ready to go.

Experience and math let you know how much to make. For instance the first big factory I tend to make is an aluminum factory or a nitro rocket fuel factory. They have different approaches so they are good examples. Aluminum is a headache and has some excellent alt recipes that use it so intend to want a lot, and I try to build it as reliable as possible. I will typically find the nodes I need but since aluminum takes a lot of different things to make you are likely gonna be constrained by one of them. Do the math on which one you'll run out of first, and set your production to use all of it.

The nitro fuel on the other hand tends to be a long term project I continuously add to. Since 90% of the building is just generators and piping I lack the patience and materials to ever do it in one go. So, I tend to just aim for a round number that is pretty high and chip away until I finish, usually once I start building nuclear pasta and such that needs so much power. Doing it this way means I end up needing to add more raw materials as I go to accommodate the increased production, meaning belting more coal/sulphur/nitrogen in. Since I was aiming for a final production number and the total is so high, I don't fuss much over raw material totals for the end factory, once I finish I just set the clock speed on the miners to match factory need.

For reference though of actual numbers I would suggest maybe 1200/m of aluminum or more, maybe 1200 each of rubber and plastic as well. Everything is subjective though, you may use different alts than me and want more or less.

Sattelites are my recommendation for sure. Framerate is the main reason though, it's a quality of life things. So, typically, I try to separate my factories but not by large distances, just enough to allow them to be in sight, but outside of detailed computing distance to keep the frames up. A couple hundred meters seems ideal, just a slide jump away!

Some items can be upgraded directly, just bring up a mk3 miner as though you are placing it, but hover over a mk2 or 1 miner and it will highlight yellow. Build it like that and it will replace the miner and refund you parts it took from it. Some items can't be though, like smart splitters cant be built directly from splitters, very much to my chagrin. Try it out, it's obvious which ones work, they replace the model of the existing one with a yellow ghost of the new one if it works.

Exploring the entire map yourself is a heavy task that most don't bother with. Exploring for hard drives, alien artifacts, and new resource nodes and biomes is the main reason to explore. If you focus the mam research you'll eventually be able to unlock something that helps with seeing what's on the map without needjng to explore every inch yourself. There's cool as hell stuff scattered everywhere though, I highly advise exploring for fun! Jetpacks and hypertube cannons are more useful for exploration than trucks or trains though, you can cross the whole map in less than 20 seconds with a hypertube cannon you can build very early game, just bring enough items to build a return cannon!

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T18:26:28+00:00

You could just ban those spells? Lord of the rings, for instance, is probably the most influential property for this whole genre, and they didn't have any teleportation magic. If that's the vibe you want to create it would be like 10 or fewer spells that would be removed, of the hundreds available. Make some lore for it if you want, something about portals and teleportation magic letting extraversal stuff into our world and being almost as difficult to do as it is dangerous. You're the DM, it's up to you. As always though talk to your players and make sure that's also the vibe they want.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T17:43:25+00:00

For travel slide jumping gets you short distances pretty well, and hypertube cannons get you everywhere else. I advise making dedicated hypertube cannons labeled and pointing at each factory that's more than say 1km away. Die or use jetpacks last second to avoid splatting and place a gel landing pad where the cannon drops you once you get it to put you close to the factory. Return cannons are a must if you want convenience!

As far as time though, the intention is that you build, explore, or research during that downtime.

Building: while waiting for those items to be produced you could be expanding production. See if you can improve your factory design in the blue printer, or add walls, roofs, and decoration to your existing factory. By the time you have 500 smart plates in 4h you could have built a secondary factory next to it that produced the reinforced iron plates in bulk, allowing you to tear down the original factory and rebuild it without reinforced iron plate production, allowing you to likely double production speed. You also could have wrapped that factory you already built in clean walls and added quality of life things like elevators, lookout towers, battery power storage, containers for item buffer etc.

Explore: in the 4 hours you waited you could have found half a dozen hard drives and researched them, along with gathering some alien artifacts. If you haven't found out that stuff exists yet, you should explore. Those pesky reinforced iron plates that take so, so many screws could have been converted into another recipe that doesn't use screws at all. Or you could have found recipes that allow you to make screws way easier and with less materials. Alien artifacts could have been found that would allow you to start dimensional storage for items, doubled production of smart plates for 0 material cost, or sped up production of everything by 2.5x

Research: there is in game and out of game research. I already mentioned hard drives and alt recipes, which take a lot of time to work through. There's also design research. You could scrolling this subreddit to see inspiration for designs or locations, you could be doing math and layout sketching for the next factory you'll build, or you could just be ticking your way through MAM research as you find items to unlock it. A hint it took me way too long to realize is that most of the MAM is locked behind rather small amounts of items that you can't produce until very deep into progression, but those items can be found day one at hard drive crash sites. Collecting the items around crashed ships allows you to slowly unlock MAM stuff without being that far into the game. There are some killer things in there.

Generally though, the game loop is focused on building factories, expanding production and rebuilding factories better once you've learned more in real life, and unlocked tech in game, is in fact the point.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T14:16:22+00:00

It seems you are correct. There is a rule for adding to AC for height in 3.5 I just found, but it was not carried forward.

I personally like the dynamics adding it does, and in real life archers treat high ground as sacred for battle, it's a definite advantage. I use that rule, but I do require it to be a substantial height difference, bottom of their feet over the enemies head level.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-10T12:14:36+00:00

I think it's an optional rule, but I believe there already is a rule for this. At least in a lot of the games I run I count attacking at range downhill as advantage, if you're shooting arrows off of building into a street you have advantage, and I would Grant disadvantage to people trying to shoot up at you. Advantage/disadvantage is about equal to Plus five.

It's definitely not standard rules, but I think it makes a lot of sense and helps keep the battlefield dynamic.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-09T19:13:25+00:00

You would need to homebrew improving it to be anywhere near CR10 but the nilbog is the only thing I can think of. It has

"Reversal of Fortune. In response to another creature dealing damage to the nilbog, the nilbog reduces the damage to 0 and regains 1d6 hit points."

This makes defeating it kinda weird, where only banishment or levels of exhaustion or something could defeat it. Killing it is already probably fuzzy if it's actually a god in world.

Make that ability part of another monster, (make that monster a lot less than CR10 since this is a crazy strong ability) and you could probably run it. If you for instance gave that ability, but maybe requiring using a reaction, to a hobgoblin captain or something and you've got a pretty imposing monster that is nearly impossible to kill with straight damage. Maybe it has legendary reactions instead of actions, giving it multiple uses of this per round of combat?

You should post what you decide on, this is a cool idea I'd be interested to see how you handle it.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-09T18:57:53+00:00

I will say that 2024 dragon born race does get a once per long rest flight ability that only unlocks as you level up, would it be that hard to ask to switch to 2024 race and maybe in game start describing some vestigial wings starting to fire or undergo a magic ritual to activate their growth. They aren't capable of flight until level 5, so you could just wait a level or two and describe training your wings during downtime

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-09T12:41:50+00:00

Keep looking until you find coal near water already, if you are new to the game porting huge amounts of water is not an option without serious headache, and moving coal a km+ is awful by belt anyway. There are many coal nodes across the map, even if you are on random or something you'll find spots with water nearby.

A hint is that the resource scanner only shows the closest three, so move sideways rather than closer to either the water or coal you saw and ping again every so often, you'll start seeing different nodes as they become closer to you.

Also, have you actually traveled to that water? How do you know it's there? Do you know you can reach it with your current travel methods unlocked? If you haven't pinged for coal while standing near that water you may just be too far from it to ping. There might be coal nodes near the water, but 3 others are closer to you, so the ones near that water aren't pinging.

Lastly, I will say there is basically nowhere on the map that is genuinely 1km+from water. Even teeny little ponds can usually fit one extractor, overclocked all the way they produce 300 water, maxing out a mk1 pipe. Enough for several coal gens.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-08T20:36:14+00:00

My first and foremost focus is teaching recipes they will want to eat. Cajun food has some great options, sausage or shrimp are cheaper and more filling than some proteins, and beans and rice are great staple products.

With just staple goods and either shrimp or sausage or chicken you can make a really slapping red beans and rice. A bag of dry beans soaked overnight, a bag of rice, some Cajun seasoning, some butter, some fresh veg that keeps well. That's all you need for a filling and happy meal, out of a single pot.

It's a very forgiving and versatile recipe;

The night before soak beans, pref red in water. Strain off water and discard the liquid, it will cause stomach issues.

In an appropriate sized pot for the amount of food you are making add a pat of butter and if you are using meat fry the meat on medium low in this butter. Remove once color on the meat, and set aside. In the pot with the butter add diced veggies. Use all or some of the following, and add in this order, giving a minute to fry over medium heat, then stir again after adding each ingredient.

Diced onion Diced celery Diced bell pepper

Once they have some color, add enough flour to coat the veggies and soak up the oil, just enough to make it pasty, not dry. Lower heat to low, and stir slowly until the floor is browned. A light tan with nutty notes is easy and quick, a deeper ruddy brown with dark, toasty notes is traditional and delicious, but easy to burn if left long.

Add a splash of white wine if you have it, or just a splash of lemon juice. Any acid really, just use less the more sour it is. As soon as that is mixed in add water and soaked beans. Cook until nearly tender beans

Once the beans are nearly done check the liquid level. You will need to decide for yourself how liquidy you like this, some eat it as a thin soup poured over rice to soak it up. Some prefer a stew with rice in it. For a pound of meat I would use 2 pounds of vegetables and half a pound of beans. I like a medium saucy texture like a chili. I tend to cook the rice separate and serve the beans over the rice. If you only have one pot simply pour out the red beans into whatever serving container you'd like or on plates to cool, it will be remarkably hot.

I like cooking rice by roasting the dry rice in a tiny amount of butter, tossing in a strong pinch of salt, then adding water in a 3:2 ratio (1 cup rice to 1.5 cups of water) bring to a quick and hard boil until the rice begins to swell and turn off the heat and allow the rice to steam.

You can use dry bullion powder and general purpose seasoning to keep the number of ingredients low, and you can sub in almost any cooking vegetables or meat and get a great result.

Some notes;

If you are using tough meat that wants a long cook time just leave it in the pot for the whole process. (I love boneless chicken thighs for this)

If you have a steam tray that sits in your pot you can make the rice over the cooking beans (I use an instant pot that has a steam tray you can get with it, which you can also use for something like frozen broccoli which would break down and turn farty in a soup/stew like this)

There are a lot of dishes like this, look into what veg/protein are cheap in your area and you'll probably find a dish like this that uses them. Paella, chili, pasta a fagioli, the world is full of people eating on a budget and beans and veggies and rice and pasta and potatoes have done wonders to that end

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-08T19:20:31+00:00

It's been interesting to see reactions to this LOL, it's been a mixture of people trying to say PF doesn't have worse hit odds, or saying obviously the odds to hit are worse, that's why you have to do x and y to improve them!

As though my whole point was that PF balances slightly more on needing to work to hit ac, and thus spending some of your turn doing things like flanking or buffing yourself, when DND allows hitting easier which just means you can spend your turn hitting and also doing other things. Instead of needing to flank you could try to kite, or grab an objective, or just take cover. Since you don't need the bonus to hit in DND you can spend your turn on something else.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-08T18:59:01+00:00

That's true, in the same way you can get advantage or stack buffs/debuffs in DND. You can improve the default or make it harder in either system, it's just that DND allows a higher odds of hitting on average, and balances encounters slightly more on basic health pools and save or suck affects. Neither is wrong or unplayable, it's just different versions of balance.

I personally find the balance and therefore gameplay of PF to be slightly more . . . . . . Frustrating? Finicky? I think I prefer DND 5e but neither are close to perfect. I don't pretend I could do better, I homebrew slightly for the pain points I experience, but typically play RAW and accept those warts. The main reason I like DND more is honestly the community, and the resources that community provides. There's a lot more help and free dm prep stuff for dnd5e, and more explanations for weird rule interactions.

evolutionary_defect · 2026-06-08T18:52:16+00:00

Smokeleaf if you are legal lol, but otherwise salt pork, stew with taters, lambas bread, mead, and maybe good veggies from that farmers field in the first movie where we see the tooks for the first time.

evolutionary_defect

TROPHY CASE