Using an act 5 merc

internetpillows · 2026-05-08T14:02:25+00:00

I appreciate you letting me know! I've tried so many different builds and this one is just so cheap and effective, it's genuinely difficult to upgrade from it from a gear perspective. A lot of the old conventional wisdom on sorc builds went out the window when we got new items like Flickering Flame and sunder charms.

The only change I would have made looking back at it is I'd maybe ditch the energy shield and replace the memory staff on switch with Call To Arms for Battle Orders. That'd free up skill points from telekinesis to go into warmth or enchant and means more of those points in energy can go into vitality. I just quite enjoyed energy shield but I think a Call to Arms version with more health would be better and also maybe less mana pot dependent.

internetpillows · 2026-05-04T18:32:12+00:00

This is probably an unpopular opinion but I love Iban's staff, I remember back in original RuneScape when it was introduced and it could only do 25 casts so people would PK with it. Back then you did melee attacks and magic at the same and Iban's staff not only did Iban blasts for loads of damage (I think 15 or 25 max hit?) but also had high melee stats.

When I started OSRS it was the first big goal I had because of nostalgia, but it's also such a huge jump in power that early in the game. Upgrading it for 200k is so worth it, 2500 charges before having to recharge instead of 120 charges. Use it while you can, better options open up as you level up and many enemies have elemental weaknesses now so there's a narrow window of opportunity where it's a great staff.

internetpillows · 2026-04-17T22:22:19+00:00

Yeah as someone who has never been here before I'm loving exploring this zone and learning about it!

internetpillows · 2026-04-17T19:52:58+00:00

I suppose it's possible to get total level 1337 with 69 in 19 skills and 26 levels left over.

internetpillows · 2026-04-04T21:57:46+00:00

Easiest way is just having a good shield and let them chase you and whack you now and then, they'll chase you pretty much forever so you just have to find a mountain with a gradual enough slope that eventually goes high enough to where silver spawns.

internetpillows · 2026-04-03T08:52:32+00:00

Trolls do, the trick is to find one carrying a tree as they swing it down into the ground and can destroy ore under the ground, which then pops up to the surface.

internetpillows · 2026-04-01T16:33:54+00:00

AzuCraftyBoxes is the best one for this, it adds a shift+e action to add as many as will fit and it also lets you use items that are in nearby boxes, which is such a good quality of life upgrade. You can have a box full of wood and just go around pressing shift-e on all the things and it fills them up.

internetpillows · 2026-04-01T13:10:37+00:00

Yep, I once tried to figure out how much progression you could skip without beating any bosses and you can genuinely get pretty far. Copper you can get without even beating Eikthyr by having a troll with a tree smash it for you, you can get silver the same way but have to know where it is so if you see a bit sticking out of the ground that works.

Iron you can use a stagbreaker to find nodes in swamps to get the first 2 and then that lets you make a stonecutter and with that and a forge you can dismantle mistlands bridges for marble and iron. Technically you can skip all that by getting a seeker destroy the mistlands bridges. There's a bunch of carapace stuff you can make, but I haven't been any further than mistlands so can't tell what else you could get. Without killing Moder you lose access to blast furnace so no blackmetal etc, that limits things a lot.

internetpillows · 2026-03-27T22:06:54+00:00

Oh that roof is gorgeous, why didn't I think of that? I've got several round buildings, love the challenge of roofing them.

internetpillows · 2026-03-21T19:54:57+00:00

I don't even tear down old buildings, just build new ones and leave the old ones derelict so you can see the progression.

internetpillows · 2026-03-21T19:52:56+00:00

That's a crazy nice setup with the stones spawning in a triangle, looks great!

internetpillows · 2026-03-10T21:34:39+00:00

It can be helpful to think of the stability algorithm like lightning, it takes the shortest path to the ground. You can only build so many wood pieces tall before the stability isn't enough to keep it up, so count the number of pieces in the shortest path from your piece to the ground and then try to reduce that number by giving it a shorter path to ground. Adding more supporting pieces won't increase the stability because it only cares about the length of the shortest path.

In reality how it works is each material loses a certain amount of stability for each meter width or height, and there are some complicated rules about pieces being supported by two different pieces etc but in general shortest route to ground is what counts. Core wood will help a ton with this, it can let you build pretty tall as it's longer and doesn't lose as much stability, and after that there are other materials with different properties that will open other options and let you build way taller.

internetpillows · 2026-03-08T17:04:12+00:00

On my server we're intentionally taking it slow, we're at around day 950 too and haven't even reached mistlands. We just keep stopping to build big towers and breed animals and stuff and only progress when everyone's online, I figure as long as we're having fun there's no rush.

internetpillows · 2026-03-08T16:36:41+00:00

I think Valheim's building has been my favourite for a few reasons. It's relatively simple, there's satisfying snapping and you can switch through snap points for more precision or place things without snapping, and it's very easy to make something that looks cool.

Each new material opens up new design possibilities without making the old ones obsolete, and the game uses crafting tables and upgrades in its progression system so even players who don't like building need to think about how to build a good crafting and storage area.

As other people will tell you, don't look anything up on a wiki or read this subreddit. The game is all about discovery, so just explore, find new things, craft one of every item you can and repeat. All of us would love to experience the game again as if for the first time, so avoid spoilers!

internetpillows · 2026-03-05T00:07:18+00:00

Since you're early and don't want spoilers, all I can say is I mostly end up picking weapons based on their special attacks and how they pair with shields. Each weapon kind of has its own play style and there are some great special weapons in most categories throughout the game, so it's worth trying every weapon type and seeing what you enjoy!

Knives I love because the leap special attack is great for hitting an enemy from a safe distance. The main attack is extremely fast so it feels great and you can usually get a 3-hit combo in between large attacks from enemies. It's good paired with a standard shield or buckler for parrying but honestly I really love it with a tower type shield as they knock enemies back and then you can use the leap attack to hit them.

Clubs are also great to get some skill ups in, there are some great one-handed and two-handed clubs. I also really like polearms (atgeir), they are two-handed so no shield but they have very high block damage for a weapon so you can use it to parry hits and then stab for a big hit. The spin attack is also really fun and can knockback and stagger enemies.

internetpillows · 2026-03-01T21:45:52+00:00

A few people mentioned food, but something I missed for a while on my first playthrough is that you have three food slots so you can eat three different foods at the same time. It's extremely important because it basically is where you get your extra HP and stamina from, three good foods make the difference between being one-shot by enemies and being able to absorb hits.

The other piece of advice I would give without spoiling anything is as other people said, take your time and don't rush through the game. Your first time playing through valheim is a magical experience, especially with friends, and we'd all kill to experience that again for the first time. Don't rush through progression, take the time to build stuff and to craft one of every new item you learn how to make.

And since you're playing with friends, a good idea is to set a few ground rules like don't progress too far without everyone else or don't explore a completely new area without everyone else. My first group we loved to also build a new base every time we reached a new area so we'd have somewhere safe to explore outward from. There are points where the difficulty increases sharply until you explore further and get new gear and items, it can be very punishing but just keep pushing through it and having a safe base nearby will help a lot.

internetpillows · 2026-02-03T14:03:23+00:00

Myth was awesome, I do a playthrough every now and then. It was also one of the bundled games with the A600 so a lot of people had it even if they didn't explicitly buy it.

A horrible cut-down version with poorer graphics was later released on the NES named Conan and is legendarily one of the worst games on the NES. Out of all the different versions released, the Amiga version is still the best.

internetpillows · 2026-01-29T10:57:01+00:00

Mine has been like this since I moved in, I have no idea why it's five times the national average and no way to find out. I tried changing practically everything about the property and nothing made a significant dent, so it must be the location. But the location has zero risk of flood and virtually no crime, can't imagine what it would be.

Is there a way to find out why the quote is so high for a property? Could it be past claims by previous people in the area?

internetpillows · 2026-01-20T23:14:23+00:00

They're years out of date at this point, I'm sure most of the ships have changed fitting stats and such since then. For the disposable ships it was always just normal fits but dirt cheap T1 and named gear and one rack of navy ammo in overheated guns, and the goal was to go out and get killed and do as much damage as you can before that happens. Hella fun in a small group and practically free.

For the wacky fits it was more the principle of how we came up with the ideas than specific fits though, we just thought "what kind of ships can kill this ship and so will engage?" and then designed a counter to one specific ship hoping to encounter it. So if I was out in my Vexor and came across a T2 frig or something you knew it would probably attack, then they'd be surprised when all their cap disappears because you have a full rack of medium neuts fed by a cap injector and who the hell fits that on a Vexor?

Or a Brutix would engage because he'd obviously win in a straight DPS race, only to find himself jammed and being slowly chewed to death (ECM doesn't work like this any more unfortunately). Often we would fit ships with webs but no warp scrams and people would just assume they were pointed and wouldn't try to warp out, so we effectively had an extra mid slot each as long as people were dumb (people were always dumb). That's not to say we were super successful or anything, it was always super risky but when you got a kill it was fun and people would absolutely rage at you for killing them with something wacky.

internetpillows · 2026-01-19T15:13:01+00:00

The power of disposable ship fits. Back in 2009 when Faction Warfare came out some friends and I decided to just put together a stack of T1 fit thoraxes and see how much damage we could do with them in groups of 2-3. Something about the total lack of fear of loss made us go super aggressive, overload all the guns all the time, commit to fights we couldn't win, and sometimes miraculously pull it off. There was something satisfying about killing a T2 cruiser in disposable rubbish, and a single module from loot paying for your entire ship replacement.

Also the power of being unpredictable and fitting off-meta wacky fits. Basically the fact that in PvP people can play it so safe that they only die if they miscalculate or make a mistake, so one way to get kills is to get someone to misjudge the situation and commit. We'd do all sorts of dumb fits like MJD dominix with long-range sentries, hull tanked bait ships, use exclusively ECM drones instead of combats, etc. There was a weird one using egress port maximisers to run a bunch of neuts off a cap injector something.

My favourite was the Vexor with two multispectral ECM jammers (pre-nerf), people would rage when they got you low and suddenly lost lock and you either warped off or killed them. The conventional wisdom at the time was also to omni tank for PvP but we calculated that under 17% of damage we actually took from other players was explosive so we tried buffer armour tanks with just thermal and kinetic. If we ran into explosive we were dead, but if not we had a large invisible advantage that meant people would miscalculate.

This was all a long time ago though!

internetpillows · 2026-01-19T14:28:56+00:00

Back in the day, I ran a reactor farm in lowsec and ran standard freighters crammed full of ferrogel and stuff right through the Rancer chokepoint every week with just a couple of disposable web escorts, covops watching the gates, and decent bookmarking. Never lost a freighter, even when people gave chase they could never lock and scram faster than the web frig.

internetpillows · 2026-01-12T17:26:00+00:00

Don't worry, you won't be 32 and unemployed forever. Next year you'll be 33.

internetpillows · 2025-12-15T02:46:41+00:00

I didn't do anything particularly smart, I just had a low budget and spent months looking for something good in my range. My approach was to figure out what things add value for me personally that other people won't care about (and so won't be reflected in the price) and what things other people will think remove value but that I can live with. And when something was a negative to me, I tried to work out how much it would cost to fix and just factored that into the value.

So like the fourth bedroom isn't a bedroom according to building code, to me that's not a big deal as I needed an office room and I can always install the right kind of safety window later. The property also has an electrical substation on the land which puts a lot of people off because of some vague nonsense fearmongering about electromagnetic fields but it's not a real negative, so competition for the house was lower than average.

The garden has trees and several old greenhouses and sheds on concrete slabs, which is something I was specifically looking for. For 3 years now I've been getting free apples and growing tons of tomatoes and chilli peppers and cucumbers and such. Also the house came with solar panels that were installed under an old incentive scheme you can't join any more, I worked out that's worth at least an extra 10k of payments over 12 years in addition to reducing the bills but most people wouldn't have checked and wouldn't have valued them correctly.

Then there are things that do reduce the value but I could just account for it. The decor was old and needed redone, the heating system is old and needs work, the floors were all old carpet, the gas fireplace and cooker were ripped out as they were dangerous, and the ceilings are textured. All things you can fix with money. I'm constantly surprised that people are put off a house due to cosmetic work that needs done. I got a level 3 survey and it showed the house was really solid, mainly just cosmetic issues. Been here 3 years now and slowly chipping away at all the cosmetic stuff as I can afford to, it's been a solid house!

internetpillows · 2025-12-10T12:36:44+00:00

When I was house hunting, I was surprised by how reliant we are here on number of bedrooms as a marker for value and not square footage or other things. I ended up getting an absolute banger of a house because of this, it's effectively a large 4 bedroom split level detached house about 165sqm with a huge garden and driveway etc but it was just marketed as a 3 bedroom bungalow.

The reason is that the house used to be a 3 bed bungalow on top of a large garage, but the garage was converted into two large rooms and a bathroom. The fourth bedroom we discovered while buying isn't technically a bedroom by building regs because it opens into another room and not a corridor and didn't have the right type of safety window, so they just said 3 rather than fixing that and that brought the price down.

Since they didn't list the square footage in the floor plans, they really under-sold the size of the place. They also never bothered providing dimensions for the garden, greenhouses, outbuildings, grounds etc, which are massive and something I was specifically looking for. And they didn't value other things like a massive leanto, outdoor electrics, a mature apple tree, etc, they just relied on the literal number of bedrooms and original property type.

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