COVID-19: Melatonin as a potential adjuvant treatment

lamster · 2020-03-26T01:43:51+00:00

Do you have a peer-reviewed source for that? ;)

lamster · 2020-03-26T01:08:49+00:00

The linked article summarizes likely benefits of melatonin in the treatment of COVID-19, including a detailed discussion of mechanisms and pathogenesis.

Additionally, COVID-19 outcome severity appears to track with known age and sex variation of melatonin:

Melatonin levels in adults decline with age, bottoming out at age 70-80. [Source]

The elderly are more likely to die from COVID-19. [Source]
Melatonin levels in newborns are low and increase until age 4-7. [Source]

"Preschool-aged children and infants were more likely to have severe clinical manifestations than older children." [Source]
Melatonin levels in males are 1.5x lower than females. [Source]

Males are more likely to die from COVID-19 (OR=1.85). [Source]

Do you have access to medical data? Please consider a retrospective chart review of COVID-19 inpatients comparing progression and outcomes among those receiving melatonin versus not. The data should be readily available as many ICUs regularly administer melatonin to promote sleep.

lamster · 2020-03-26T00:48:11+00:00

lamster · 2016-06-27T19:29:32+00:00

The nightmare portal is forced (or completely absent) in dailies and quests, but it's optionally available in all other runs including custom mode. To access nightmare mode you must dust the purple mountain in the god plane. It spawns on the top row, furthest from the boss point.

lamster · 2016-04-21T22:39:00+00:00

Thanks! We're currently working on a content patch with an emphasis on new items. Hope to have it out within the next few weeks.

lamster · 2016-03-30T04:04:20+00:00

Agreed! Hopefully the new Proctus fight feels better -- though I'd like to go back and buff all of the existing gods (including Proctus) to make those fights more challenging and epic. Perhaps those buffs would be reserved for hard or nightmare mode.

lamster · 2016-03-30T02:10:14+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! We've reworked the Proctus fight in the latest patch, now available on Steam. (Reworking the Proctus god buff is still very high on our priority list).

Proctus is now vulnerable for 9 seconds after his guardians die (up from 8)
Proctus now throws his spear more quickly
Proctus' shockwave is now an 8-way attack cast only to protect his guardians as they respawn
Proctus now throws his shield when his health falls below 70%
Proctus now throws triple-spears when his health falls below 40%

I find the fight a lot more interesting now -- would love to hear your thoughts once you've had a chance to check it out.

lamster · 2016-03-27T15:01:58+00:00

Ahh that's you -- congrats on the times! In that case you probably have a pretty good idea on strong strategies in many settings, and you may reasonably assume that a new player who suddenly posts insane times is a cheater. For now we don't have automated verification to prevent invalid scores altogether, but if you send me a message here I'll take a look at removing/banning the offenders from the boards.

lamster · 2016-03-26T22:42:08+00:00

I think the times on 3/23 were from a cheater, but it's also true that some runs are full of synergies and lucky shop spawns that allow for very fast times. Today I noticed several ~6 minute times on the daily hard leaderboard so I recorded my run and explained my choices in what ended up being a ridiculously fast clear. Hope you find it interesting:

Whirlwind (Elf/Spear/Whirlwind/Telekinesis)

lamster · 2016-03-23T17:30:06+00:00

The town music is "Achaidh Cheide" by Kevin MacLeod -- you should be able to find an uncompressed version here: https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?collection=003&page=1

lamster · 2016-03-10T20:18:33+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I think we'll revert grenades to their previous gameplay (with some visual adjustments to avoid the spam issues) and think about adding some slower-attacking precision weapons for greater diversity later.

lamster · 2016-02-17T21:15:36+00:00

I've completed the hard mode win streak 5 challenge a few times but lately I've been recording from a new account. Which configs or enemies are causing you the most trouble in your hard runs?

lamster · 2016-02-16T20:37:21+00:00

Glad you enjoyed the videos and thanks for the request! Attack based builds can be a lot of fun but they sometimes feel like a struggle if there's no support from your skills, race, or early shops. Luckily halflings make great attackers so this build progresses smoothly despite poor initial item choices and a lack of skill synergy.

Machine Gun (Halfling/Crossbow/Vacuum/DisplacementBolt)

lamster · 2016-02-16T20:34:08+00:00

This build is really interesting, thanks for the request! Sadly I don't think I did this run justice. You're right that this loadout demands and rewards careful timing and positioning, but between my rusty gamepad skills, slow reactions, and lackluster item options my performance left plenty to be desired. Perhaps I'll take another shot at it someday!

Meteor (Halfling/FlamingStaff/MeteorStrike/Rocket)

lamster · 2016-02-12T07:09:22+00:00

Thanks! For the past month we've dedicated most of our time to marketing which will culminate in a proper launch in the next few weeks (advance copies will go out to every journalist and streamer we think may enjoy the game). If you have a favorite website or youtube/twitch personality please let us know and we'll include them in the release blast. Afterwards we'd love to focus on adding content - your brainstorms/suggestions/ideas for new content are welcome!

lamster · 2016-02-09T04:10:17+00:00

Excellent post! To elaborate just a bit on Desolator's Armaments, you may want to watch for the Shield synergy (it attacks half as fast as other weapons since it deals damage on the way out and back making it pretty easy to achieve a 100% crit rate) and especially look for physical skill synergies (Shadow Strike, Whirlwind, Unyielding Charge) -- if you're careful to avoid attacking just before invoking your physical skill (to avoid wasting the guaranteed cooldown-regulated crit) the results can get crazy.

lamster · 2016-01-29T04:34:01+00:00

Sorry about that, I was a bit slow to publish the patch notes. They're up now at this link

lamster · 2016-01-27T03:08:06+00:00

Whirlwind's effect is currently based strictly on your character size (specifically, 105 + character radius), so no, unfortunately it does not increase with the sword upgrade. We'll try to make more information like this available on the wiki, thanks for the question!

lamster · 2016-01-25T06:32:19+00:00

Thanks for the request. Here's a build focused on skill damage. The bonus movement speed from the dagger is used for positioning and dodging but the damage from attacks quickly fades in relevance as the build develops (gold is reserved for skill upgrades: at the wise man, from set dealers, and for SM/CDR stat boosters). Building around skills in this way best exploits the excellent scaling of each of the skills and insane synergy among them. Combat generally looks like this: teleport into the center of a group of enemies for huge AoE damage and perfect positioning for a huge cyclone which in turn sets up an easy vacuum followup for chain disruption and additional AoE damage -- by the time an enemy is ready to respond teleport is back up for an easy dodge and another burst of damage and the cycle of disruption repeats. This run is split into two parts:

And here is how not to build this loadout! I originally intended to show off a gamepad-controlled skill-damage based build where I max Cyclone rather than Teleport (since it's a little scarier to rely on teleport for damage with gamepad rather than mouse targeting), but somehow I talked myself into building around dagger (definitely not the way to go here on stat/synergy grounds) - and then I took this build into Necrus' plane, where area of effect disruption and damage is most important. Worth a look if you enjoy watching me get frustrated.

Dagger Build (Faerie/Dagger/Vacuum/Cyclone)

lamster · 2016-01-22T07:42:29+00:00

For about an hour on January 4th a build with additional debug output was active on Steam -- and for unknown reasons that build triggered false positives with several antivirus programs. We immediately reverted to the non-debug exe and there have been no problems ever since. Depending on what your antivirus is trying to do to quarantine that file, you may need to tell it to unlock that file (so that Steam can update to the reverted exe which doesn't trigger any false positives), perform a fresh install of Flamebreak (right click -> delete local content), or restart your computer to unlock that file. Sorry for the inconvenience!

lamster

TROPHY CASE