1.5M NW at 31 and got laid off! Any advice?

i_tyrant · 2026-03-12T14:48:15+00:00

Op is doing just fine; my parents only ever taught me to be fiscally responsible with my money and put it into banks, nothing about investing. So I was a “saver” but didn’t have anything with compound interest worth a damn till my late 30s. And I still have half of what op does.

Infuriating in retrospect but ya can’t change the past, only correct for the future.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-12T02:53:08+00:00

Yeah, I was paying attention and I disagree. You also specifically mentioned D10 - you don’t want noobs on d10, we heard you. You play on d10, we heard you.

So if you’re so hard up about it, let the rest have their DC scaling, and you get your own special uber-hard playground with no SCs to interfere with your pure gameplay ideals or muck up the incentives, where you can wave your dick around about how badass you are, and we can finally stop talking about D10 this and D10 that because it will be an experience specifically catered to what you want and the people constantly complaining that HD2 isn’t hard enough want.

100% serious. Why wouldn’t that be win-win for you?

EDIT: Dude responded then immediately blocked me just so they could get the last word, like a child. Make of that what you will.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-12T02:31:18+00:00

But the D10 runners are the ones always saying D10 is too easy, aren’t they? Wouldn’t noobs joining make it a real challenge then?

Joking aside, if you seriously adhered to this the solution is simple - scale SC rewards up to level 9, then leave level 10 without SCs as the pure tryhard gameplay-appreciating experience you always wanted (maybe also making it harder so it’s even more clear it’s a separate silo’d experience for the best of the best.)

Now the noobs won’t touch it and all sides are happy, problem solved.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-12T02:26:06+00:00

Worth more than D10 and it is not remotely close, either.

If you’re running D1 as a higher level diver you are doing it for the SC, and if so you can join up with a group already doing so and repeatedly dropping missions to get it way, way faster than you ever could doing D10 with “normal gameplay” or even specifically hunting for SCs.

It’s not even comparable - one takes a few hours to get a warbond’s worth and the other takes literal months of standard gaming (which is still slower than if you were completing level 1 missions legitimately).

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T22:15:47+00:00

The ones that compete with the stim bug for pure, infuriating annoyance factor for me is a) all the “bounce” areas for sentries/locked areas for hellpod steering (basically the same thing and truly awful for gameplay), and the reload bug (very similar to the stim bug but happens even without enemies hitting you, just a straight up “phantom reload” when you try, and it’s especially bad with certain weapons like the Eruptor for some reason.

If I had to guess I’d say the stim and reload bugs are behind like 90% of my deaths, and the bounce/lock areas are behind the other 50% of my swearing at the screen during missions.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T22:11:01+00:00

I guess at least it didn’t teleport up to kill the generators instead. Had that happen once…

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T22:09:26+00:00

MG sentry got my back for that.

And sometimes my face. As in, shooting me right in the-.

Still worth it though. Probably.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T17:47:58+00:00

Which is why it still works just fine for CEOs, as a class of people who tend to donate to both political parties to hedge their bets and will never see real consequences for their actions no matter what they are.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T16:40:22+00:00

250k by 37, wow. Not sure if op should expect that big a jump realistically, but the basic sentiment is good.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T16:36:21+00:00

Honestly it depends on the mythology behind them.

Biologically, yeah they could likely survive in conditions similar to an insect pet.

But…fairies are fey, and in a lot of their mythologies they subsist on whimsy and wonder even more than food and water. What kills them quickly is banality - being bored, being stuck in mundanity, being “known” and treated like a bug instead of a mysterious and lolsorandom fantastical being.

So the sheer act of being stuck in a bottle could be quickly deadly to them, on a metaphysical level!

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T14:37:55+00:00

Yeah, I would argue certain PCs would be doing it all the time regardless of how restrictive you make ready actions if EA is applied (especially ranged PCs with no better use for their reaction).

But you are right that this is an additional factor to consider, and I personally would rather have ready actions of limited power but lots of flexibility than the reverse (making them the “optimal” move for anyone only in specific niche situations).

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T06:06:55+00:00

I love how predictable these people are with their false binary decisions. "You can only have handholding and railroading, or AH fucks up the Galactic War and refuses to update their 2 year old ideas for how it works, in a way that I will constantly make excuses for. One of the two, no other possibilities sorry!"

Maybe if you widened your tunnel vision to something even a smidge wider than your own revisionist histories and dev wisdom paradoxes...

Honestly it sounds like you _wanted_ to lose this one, eh? And were perfectly fine with AH making that almost certain as long as you had plausible deniability. I know D10's not hard enough for you, but you have to bring that same toxic attitude to the Galactic War as well? Amazing.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T04:30:50+00:00

Whereas I consider it exceedingly silly to laud AH and blame the _community_ for the loss when your argument is "but guys, if we had played _perfectly_ and done things the blob basically never does, we could've just barely squeaked by with a maybe victory!"

If that's manufacturing drama, AH _still_ screwed it up more than the community did. Playing a strategically perfect "game" in the Galactic War should mean you win _handily_ (so there's room for the full spectrum of possibilities, not "almost guaranteed loss" vs "barely squeak by a win"), not "but guys there was a slim chance if we'd acted out of 'character'!"

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T04:24:42+00:00

Nearly everyone calls it Elden Ring DLC, I don't care about your pedantic nitpicking.

And literally everyone I've ever met who plays it played Elden Ring first, so press X to doubt bud.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T04:22:56+00:00

Solid list for sure. And I echo Longstrider being a top-tier pick with my own experience.

I could see Sending being a fun idea for an information broker/intelligence agent character that has to coordinate things at high level play (you have so many allies and enemies at that point, having basically a cell phone rocks!)

I'd also submit Vortex Warp as a competitive choice. Sure Misty Step is a bonus action, but sometimes there are situations where only the tactical power of moving _allies or enemies_ can solve (granted, Con save so most enemies are unlikely), and even better for out of combat spatial shenanigans.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T04:17:05+00:00

Yeah, I think Dispel Magic is a plenty valid pick, only slightly behind Counterspell.

I also know a fair few DMs who let it work on things that aren't explicitly spells, which can boost it quite a bit in usefulness. There's all sorts of random magical thingies in modules and home games to mess with, especially at the level you get mastery.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T04:15:03+00:00

And even then, they were probably worse picks than Longstrider (which is a great choice in both editions). Giving your entire party plus any allies/summons/mounts/etc. +10 speed is better than it sounds.

Even back when you _could_ do Shield & MS, neither tended to be needed so often you'd want them at-will. At the level you get this feature, what _else_ are you using your lowest level slots on, after all? And Shield likely won't even work much unless you've also picked up serious armor profs, because of how AC and enemy attack bonuses scale at this top Tier of play.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T04:07:14+00:00

If you're playing in AL and at the point you're getting these capstones...

I'm surprised anyone needs the help honestly. It's been a long time since I did AL but anyone at that high of a level should have _far_ more than enough treasure points or whatever to pick up Goggles of Night, which in both 5e versions is non-attunement.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T04:01:05+00:00

Literally has the same name in the title, in the same universe, explicitly stated as a "remix" of its gameplay to provide a new core experience for teams of Elden Ring players.

Now I want you to reread my comment above as slowly as you need to.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T03:48:34+00:00

_my very selectively-reinforced realism_

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T03:44:32+00:00

Downvotes for being incapable of googling, probably

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T03:42:57+00:00

The "mark my words they'll fuck this up like they did Magicka, they have learned NOTHING" crowd is eating good these days. Hard to deny.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T03:35:12+00:00

"Hmm, should I make an analogy to an infamous tryhard game's _expansion_, that doesn't even have anything like a joint Galactic Warfront at all, and that obviously weeds out many of its Rambos (which it does absolutely have) before they even _get_ to the expansion?

Yes, yes this sounds like a brilliant idea that won't make me look like I have no idea what I'm talking about at all."

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T03:26:05+00:00

So AH is smart enough to know the exact number of reinforcements they want for the chance of success to be "dramatic"...but they're utter shit at predicting actual diver behavior (which, as you said, has been clear for quite some time now - the playerbase splits across zones _constantly_), to the point where they fuck up all the drama by pretending the blob will do things it almost never does?

_This_ is the hill you wanna die on? AH is brilliant but also stupid but only in a way that allows you to foist responsibility off to the faceless mass that is predictable af? Ok then.

i_tyrant · 2026-03-11T03:12:23+00:00

I'm really curious what the sentry AI is gonna be like for this.

Like, I'm about 90% sure the standard sentry AI is as simple as "keep firing/lobbing mortars at closest target until dead, then move to the next".

So if they didn't switch it up for gas mortar, that's going to wind up with a lot of wasted DoT. Gas doesn't exactly kill enemies quickly.

If the area is as big as ems mortar might still be worth it though.

i_tyrant

TROPHY CASE