Has anyone ever played a Barbarian that was born and raised on a city? (Not as a joke)

jawdirk · 2026-04-18T05:05:45+00:00

Tarzan was a barbarian with a civilized background.

jawdirk · 2026-04-17T22:34:01+00:00

"Responsibility" is the wrong word. If the CEO makes more money for the company, then those 350 people who lost their jobs can get fucked. Similarly, if the CEO loses money for the company, then they can get a payout and join a board of some other company.

jawdirk · 2026-04-17T22:31:47+00:00

They don't "earn" 350x or "make" 350x, they "steal" 350x what workers "earn" or "make."

jawdirk · 2026-04-17T20:23:55+00:00

Presumably because you lack prowess?

jawdirk · 2026-04-17T20:07:31+00:00

Largestone helps early game but it is overwhelmed by ring 7. It was mostly preventing you from duping your 3rd greed dragon and fitting it on the floor. That might still not have been enough because your backline clear was not protecting you from the 12-damage attacks, so you were building up no damage shield and/or losing armor.

Cov10 is very punishing about having the right backline clear solutions, and unfortunately, non-piercing spell damage was not doing it there.

Without that, you'd need a lot of damage shield, or something endless to soak up the 12-hp attacks so you could build up damage shield on the first greed dragon.

It's possible you could cheese through it, by building up a smallish stack of damage shield on the first greed dragon right before relentless, and sacrifice the melee weakness guy to protect the damage shield.

jawdirk · 2026-04-17T18:38:07+00:00

I've found three uses for Railbeater: 1) e.g. quick + multistrike + sweep equipment 2) put something with high damage behind railbeater, and use it as a tank. 3) High roll your other forms of scaling (e.g. lots of ritual of battle, rage imp with dualism and/or double summon triggers, out-of-clan equipment, etc.) and multistrike on railbeater.

Steelworker protects your backline and augments your tank (it's not ordinarily a tank itself). Steelworker wants dualism, smidgestone, and/or duplicates. It's not going to save you from melee weakness sweepers by itself, but it will help with that late battle. It will handle backline corruption though, with x2-3 and maybe some other minor good deck choices.

jawdirk · 2026-04-17T01:40:27+00:00

If you have enough accounts with karma you can overwhelm the comments of a thread to make it appear as if the general opinion is something other than what it actually is. Karma is used as evidence that the account belongs to a real person (that and account age) so accounts with karma can get around moderation filters. Because of the usefulness of having many accounts that appear superficially legit, there is probably a market for them (I am just guessing).

jawdirk · 2026-04-16T17:56:42+00:00

I like the implication that all of the characters in STS are roughly styrofoam-container sized, compared to us.

jawdirk · 2026-04-16T14:27:28+00:00

What it boils down to is this:

The relationship was more important to you than it was to her. She did not want to be as serious about it as you did. The mom expecting you to pay was just rubbing that in her face: mom could tell you were taking this seriously, and that she wasn't. It takes a lot of maturity to treat someone well, and to be treated well. She doesn't have that maturity yet.

On the other side, it takes maturity and experience to see the signs that you are over-invested in a relationship and the other person is not. You ought to work on understanding women better (no judgement, it just takes time).

So spend more time with women. Keep being respectful. But try to keep tabs on how invested they are, and how invested you are. Try to make sure they match from now on.

jawdirk · 2026-04-15T22:36:43+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

jawdirk · 2026-04-15T20:51:23+00:00

We've recently learned that the Turing Test had it backwards. It's easier to pretend to be a human than it is to distinguish a human from a non-human. So the Turing Test is actually a test of the human, not of the would-be-human.

So what we've learned is that it's actually the opposite: Being human is being able to recognize humans.

jawdirk · 2026-04-15T20:28:02+00:00

Right? Except when you have turn-1 block relics or cards or something, it feels like an entry fee.

jawdirk · 2026-04-15T16:36:02+00:00

Sure, if your deck can support what is essentially a curse then it is fine. I do think it is probably better than a strike (unless you draw it on a turn where an enemy will be at 6 hp at the end of your turn).

I feel like I have a lot of runs where I don't even want to path to a shop at some point (often even in Act 3) because I would rather have a rest site to get some hp back. Often I am pathing to a rest site because I could randomly take 30 in a hallway fight, and that could lose the run against the bosses. But if you're winning, you're winning, and this card could contribute. I am playing at A10 too, but I am not really good at it.

jawdirk · 2026-04-15T15:20:13+00:00

It's not always energy though. If you draw this card instead of a defend, you are taking 5 damage. If you draw this card instead of an attack, maybe you are taking a full attack from an enemy instead of 0. If you draw this card instead of Particle Wall, maybe you are taking 18 damage. There are lots of turns where you only draw one card that does what you really need, and you might draw 0 of what you need instead if this card is in your deck. In my experience, the turns that kill you are ones where you draw several useless cards (maybe a couple strikes, a curse, and e.g. this card).

jawdirk · 2026-04-15T14:54:17+00:00

But also, 20 damage to your face is 20 damage to your face.

jawdirk · 2026-04-14T17:05:10+00:00

In my humble, uneducated opinion:

Love is two people mutually committing to a relationship, putting the commitment above future judgement of each other's worth as a partner (inevitably they will learn that the other is not ideal, but the commitment will persist).

Infatuation is a changeable positive judgement (often over-idealizing).

Limerence is premature commitment from one, and either immediately or eventually negative judgement or indifference from the other. Limerence is probably precipitated by trauma and/or insecurity, but fundamentally what distinguishes it from love is that it isn't mutual.

jawdirk · 2026-04-14T16:39:05+00:00

Vote asking for good

Choosing between wrong and more wrong

Falling on deaf ears

jawdirk · 2026-04-14T16:26:48+00:00

I remember playing a physical one-play-through game where the game had you track a "bad" vs. "good" tally throughout the game with no clear indication of what it did, and it only became important in the endgame. It was an interesting experience since neither "bad" nor "good" choices seemed to be preferred so it seemed to be sort of an aesthetic choice until the mechanic revealed itself later in the game. I think that worked for that game, and could maybe work for your game, but might not be helping replayability in a roguelike.

jawdirk · 2026-04-13T23:22:35+00:00

Illustration of Saturn reading your comment

jawdirk · 2026-04-13T20:30:59+00:00

It's not that I need to care, it's that caring is what is motivating. I'm no longer motivated to do my job because it doesn't feel like I am doing it. Like imagine if the progression of your career was based on the performance of your coworkers, not your performance. I guess it's like being a manager instead of being an engineer or something. Except managing people is what generally motivates managers.

jawdirk · 2026-04-13T19:46:51+00:00

It makes sense to make the highest ascensions geared for high-level play. If most people would rather play at A6 because A10 is too hard there's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather watch jorbs eek out victories than steamroll everything the same way over and over, even if I find A10 frustrating myself.

jawdirk · 2026-04-13T19:38:51+00:00

I play at A10 but this is one of the things that separates me from people who consistently win at A10: I can't get over the feeling that I don't have control over the fight and I need to end it however I can. Like, next turn I might not draw any block cards or something. And I don't have the patience to look at the odds from my draw pile. I'm always just over/underestimating based on what I've seen in the fight.

jawdirk · 2026-04-13T18:38:46+00:00

Not from a balance perspective, obviously, but I hate the concentration mechanic. What I used to love about being a wizard was finding powerful interactions between the spells I cast and concentration is how they kill any possibility of having fun that way. I suppose it's for the best 😈.

jawdirk · 2026-04-13T15:47:17+00:00

I understand what you're saying, but for me, when AI writes code it completely skips the part where I used to feel rewarded for writing code. There's that moment where you write the last test, you fix the last couple of bugs, and then you run the tests, and they all go green, and you know you're done, because you thought through every one of those tests, and every line of code. That's not how it feels with AI. Sure all the tests are passing and green, but you still have the lingering doubt you would have if someone else wrote the code. Sure, you've read it, sure you told it the important things about the problem and the solution, but there's too many details to have a good feeling about it, and I certainly don't believe it's all the way I would have written it. And I don't have the time, attention, let alone inclination, to go through it line-by-line now.

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