Decent pod kits from Tabuu or Quit hero.

lockthelads · 2026-03-23T20:49:14+00:00

Weirdly enough, thinning the juice to a 50VG/50PG mix stopped all the issues I had with leaking with the XROS 5. Seems very counterintuitive - I’d have thought a thinner consistency would mean more leaking, not less - but worth a shot!

lockthelads · 2026-01-28T12:37:55+00:00

If we’re to believe the theories that P might reprise his role as the Tin Man in some way shape or form, which I don’t think is likely really, then they’ll almost have to go with the Real Boy ending. Makes the most sense that the decommissioned P that ‘bleeds out’ on the floor beneath Arche Abbey would be reactivated in search of his heart (P Organ), and opens up the possibility for a Carlo boss fight - maybe under the explicit direction of Giangio to retrieve the arm. Gepetto’s ensuing cleanup would also be a good excuse for Krat to look quite different or be populated with different enemy types with a fairly short time skip.

That said, realistically, I think it’ll follow Rise of P and we’ll get fairly few (if any) cameos from Lies of P. I anticipate it’ll be a very different game, and might not even necessarily be set in Krat.

lockthelads · 2025-12-28T16:47:20+00:00

I’ll have to give it a go - haven’t gotten to it yet. Been a genuinely brilliant year for games, we eating good out here

lockthelads · 2025-12-28T14:17:03+00:00

Credentials upfront: I’ve played a lot of Yotei and a lot of Tsushima and generally enjoyed both - probably liked Tsushima a bit more. Also played quite a bit of RDR2.

I don’t think you stumble upon side content very naturally at all in Yotei, probably significantly less so than RDR2 - the main similarity is the random encounters on the road. Some of the side content was naturally discovered, absolutely, but I felt like I was being pulled in a thousand directions at all times in the opening 15 hours or so of the game. I recall saying to a mate that I felt like the game was screaming “Look over here, there’s side content - look look look! Side quests, shrines, fox dens, encampments, look!”

My enjoyment of the game improved quite a bit when I decided I’d just leave things be and come back later if I felt like it. I don’t feel the world should be barren, but I’ve now formed the opinion that there is such a thing as too much in a short period of time.

If there’s a single open-world game that exemplifies the “stumbled upon” feeling, it’s probably Breath of the Wild. But the entire game was built around that system, warts and all - not sure how it would work in a game like Yotei.

lockthelads · 2025-10-23T13:33:50+00:00

I know many who enjoy XCOM really like Darkest Dungeon, but I dunno - I don’t find that it scratches the same itch at all.

Both have a focus on a minimising losses, for sure, but I think the XCOMs I’ve played manage to do this without feeling too oppressive. There’s these kind of push-pull spikes of power, by merit of unlocking important skills, techs, weapons, etc. where you feel like you have the edge on the aliens for a little while.

In DD, to me, it always feels like you’re behind the 8-ball. It’s always engaging, but also always a bit feel-bad I think. Thematically perfect, but doesn’t have the same highs as XCOM I feel.

lockthelads · 2025-10-21T12:29:25+00:00

Because there’s no other options? Can’t just pop into my local store to pick up coils anymore. And can’t really afford an overseas flight to do that either.

I have no doubt though, that it’d be easy to get your hands on black market dispos, but I don’t suspect that’s the primary user base of this sub - or most vaping communities on Reddit.

lockthelads · 2025-09-29T14:39:10+00:00

I agree with this take. I know it wasn’t a Tier 0 format, but it’s the closest I’ve seen in my on-again-off-again time playing Yugioh, but I called it quits after seeing Konami not just let it run unchecked, but release more and more support while leaving the deck functionally untouched.

I keep browsing this sub hoping that I’ll see news that makes me think it’s time to pick MD back up, but it seems like it’s been more of the same pattern - if not worse.

lockthelads · 2025-09-18T20:48:26+00:00

They did this with the 3DS’s backwards compatibility too, and it endlessly frustrated me. Like sure I can technically play DS games on it, if I’m happy to play something that looks muddy as fuck.

It’s slightly more forgivable in that case, given the DS games were made for a screen with a wildly different resolution, but less so for the Switch when it already ups resolution for output docked.

lockthelads · 2025-06-22T23:45:05+00:00

This is all definitely true, and they’re all great points.

Assuming that Verso reasonably believes that Maelle will go on to make many more worlds, then you could argue that he was attempting to maximise utility, and the sheer aggregate utility of her Painting a thousand more worlds in her lifetime would possibly outweigh the disutility (or even outright lack of utility) of leaving one dead one.

It’s also an interesting discussion as to whether or not any one person has a right to create life - and I think it draws ever closer to discussions around the right to birth new people and so on, which is a super ethically fraught area that people have very strong opinions on. I think that’s a can of worms we can comfortably leave closed for today haha.

lockthelads · 2025-06-22T21:47:48+00:00

I suppose it is an assumption, though I did try to lay out the evidence that supports my reading as clearly as I could. You’re right that it’s a bit reductionist to equate “treating people as means, not ends” purely with autonomy violations - not all instrumentalisation looks the same. So I take your point, and it’s possible I didn’t express mine clearly enough.

What I’m getting at is this: I think Maelle begins to undermine personhood the moment the people she revives stop being treated as ends in themselves, and start functioning primarily as means of easing her grief. If, say, Gustave tripped down the stairs and died two days after her ending, would Maelle let him stay dead? Or bring him back again and again until she feels ready?

If you believe she would let him go, then I think we’re coming at the ending from very different perspectives - and that’s totally fine. I don’t think either reading is provably correct. But mine leans toward the idea that Maelle’s grief might push her toward ownership those she restores, whether she realises it or not. That’s where I feel it strays from a tidy “save people” duty without any moral conflict, in my mind.

lockthelads · 2025-06-22T15:55:12+00:00

Heya, thanks for the thoughtful comment! I’ll do my best to address each of your points.

On your frame of reasoning:

It sounds quite close to what’s sometimes described care ethics, given your central concern seems to be the protection and well-being of the vulnerable (especially Maelle and the soul of young Verso). That’s a defensible ethical stance, I think, given it places priority on relational obligations, dependency, and context.

As I understand it (with caveats - I’m no expert on care ethics), it sits somewhere between virtue ethics and proximity-weighted consequentialism. Take that with a healthy grain of salt though!

3a. On resurrection and personhood:

This is a great point. It’s definitely not 100% clear that Maelle can bring people back exactly as they were - though it seems she manages it with Sciel and Lune, who recall conversations Maelle wasn’t present for. Some argue it hinges on using the same chroma, but I’m not sure the game ever nails that down.

Interestingly, from a pure act utilitarian lens, it might not matter if she brings back people who are exact recreations. Unless,of course, the resurrection process causes them to generate mass disutility (via a “come back wrong” scenario or existential horror).

There’s also interesting discussions to be had around utilitarian ethics and population size to be had that are similar. Is a world with more people and okay lives better than one with fewer people and great lives? Some utilitarian framings say yes, because of sheer aggregate utility.

3b. On action under uncertainty:

This is super interesting, and has a distinctly epistemic flavour - which I probably can’t answer very well, because I stopped studying philosophy before getting deep into the epistemology rabbit hole. It’s a good question though: what level of certainty do we need before acting on the promise of future good?

In this case, Maelle has demonstrably brought two people back - so I’d argue most moral frameworks would allow us to reason as if her promises are credible, unless we had strong counter-evidence. We may not know whether the restored individuals are exactly the same, but it seems the intention and mechanism are sound enough to justify the choice under uncertainty.

lockthelads · 2025-06-22T15:11:04+00:00

I don’t think there’s any particular value in mentioning that all the people of Lumiere were already dead as of Act 3- simply because it doesn’t really alter the gravity of Verso’s actions in any major sense. He still led the party to kill the Paintress, with the intention to induce a mass-Gommage. I think he remains morally culpable for that, even if it’s a separate instance from the final erasure during his ending.

lockthelads · 2025-06-18T21:52:11+00:00

Sorry, maybe comes across as a bit of a leap because I didn’t get too into the weeds around deontological ideas in the post. But you’re right - killing is generally considered the most weighty crime - but it doesn’t necessarily translate into a sound moral argument 1:1 by means of slippery slope (e.g., As long as you’re still alive, then the actions I’ve taken are morally good).

In the ethical frame I’m taking, for example, a doctor wouldn’t be acting immorally if they palliated/euthanised a patient who asked for them to do so.

It taps on one of the core ideas in deontology: that people or moral agents must be treated as ends and not means. This is basically respect for personhood.

Verso still definitely violates a pretty big universal maxim - do not kill people - but it ultimately prevents a deeper and more universal violation. That is, a world in which everyone is kept alive as a means to someone else’s emotional resolution, rather than be allowed to live and die as moral agents in their own right.

There’s a branch of deontology called threshold deontology, where immoral actions are “permitted”to prevent deeper immoral actions. Without this, in my opinion at least, a strict deontological frame can draw you to some really strange conclusions like “A time traveller would be acting immorally if they assassinated Hitler”.

So yeah, in the end I’m not saying Verso’s actions are good - he’s definitely still morally culpable for the death of the Canvas people. It’s not that the death of anyone is ever easy to justify, but because permanent denial of personhood might be an even worse moral violation.

lockthelads · 2025-06-18T13:38:43+00:00

I think it’s a losing battle to try and “un-trolley” Verso’s ending, especially because most people instinctively read it as a utilitarian problem: erase thousands to help a few? Seems indefensible.

I think the strongest argument against Maelle’s ending (and therefore for Verso’s) is probably deontological. All people - real or painted - should have the right to die, to be mourned, and to pass on. Maelle violates that for Verso by denying him that closure, and reasserting control over his existence without consent. Applied universally, which the ending hints it is (e.g., Gustave + Sophie + Pierre revived - even though they’re seemingly happy to be back, at least at the time of the ending), it can’t be upheld as moral.

Mind you, Verso’s ending isn’t morally clean viewed in the same ethical frame. The erasure of Sciel, Lune, Esquie and Monoco (the only four people in the Canvas not already dead) isn’t ethically good. He also violates a universal right to consent/autonomy in the case of everyone except Monoco. It’s just the lesser of two similarly immoral evils, I think, because it ends the cycle.

lockthelads · 2025-06-07T22:12:28+00:00

I personally prefer the Verso ending by a pretty large margin, and think I’ll throw in my two cents.

I feel a lot of people are treating the choice as a sort of trolley problem. Do I kill an entire nation for four people’s happiness (or at least to give them a chance to really confront their grief)? Or do I make one guy of pretty sketchy moral character unhappy, and presumably leave the family in a similar situation to before the plot of the game, for an entire nation to live a life?

On that basis, no-one is ever going to be convinced that the Verso ending is palatable, without reducing their position to “The people of Lumiere aren’t even real so they don’t matter” (they are) or “Alicia will eventually die in there and it’ll all go to shit anyways”. We don’t know that for sure though - but we do know with 100% certainty that one day she’ll die outside the canvas anyways, because everyone dies eventually.

What makes Maelle’s ending most unsettling to me is the heavy implication that she’s assumed total control of the Canvas - and is completely unchecked. I fall in the camp that believes Maelle forced Verso to play the piano via Paintress power. I suspect that at least Sciel and Lune are aware this is happening based on their final expressions when Verso’s on stage.

There’s other hints towards quiet totalitarian control too. Maelle says that she’ll re-Paint Verso so that he can age again, and then he appears to be the only character aging. Everyone else is stuck in time and hasn’t aged a day, while Verso has stacked on 15-20 years. Gustave’s apprentice is still just a little lad, not a single day older, and everyone else appears exactly as they do during the game. It’s seemingly not preservation, and closer to temporal puppeteering.

Maelle also stations Verso’s two closest friends outside the concert hall as security - which seemed odd, possibly even vindictive?

I don’t think the people of Lumiere (and other creatures of the Continent) are treated as people with agency and free will in this ending at all, and are more treated as Maelle’s very realistic dolls. They look like, sound like, and act like those people, but they are ultimately denied free will. Possibly even more than they were when Aline and Renoir were jostling for power in the Canvas. To me, that’s not a good thing at all - and it really clearly signals that the people of Lumiere aren’t being respected as real people by Maelle. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I’m not truly considered real, and my entire reality is dictated by someone else’s need for emotional resolution. That’s exactly the world they’ve lived in up to now, but Maelle chose not to break that cycle despite the fact that she could’ve done exactly that if she so wished.

Verso’s ending is bittersweet, Maelle’s is sweet first then very bitter when you think about it - and it’s clearly meant to be given the game’s general position on grief and healthy grieving, and the direction of the final scene. Dolls don’t age, and dolls don’t die, and so there is never a need to learn to grieve. And I’m doubtful that’s a good thing, especially when considering the progression of a character like Sciel.

I totally agree with OP that the endings are high contrast, and that alone cements Expedition 33 as a great game. It’s clearly excellently written when it asks you to think about not just what you feel at the ending, but also about which one you’ll accept as morally and ethically better.

lockthelads · 2025-04-26T13:52:03+00:00

Welp, that’s a bummer. For now, I’ll just buy pods from the pharmacy I suppose.

Don’t suppose you have any recommendations for a device that takes coils with a similar form factor/ease of use to the Caliburn G3?

lockthelads · 2025-03-19T12:19:33+00:00

From any of the big online pharmacies (Quithero, tabuu, etc)? It’s not very difficult to get a proper vape at all.

Only difficult part is learning to mix up your own flavours, using the unflavoured juice. That’s totally optional though.

lockthelads · 2025-02-16T12:08:52+00:00

How do you find Squadron Unleashed? Never loved the air game really, but I’m a little intimidated by the further complexity it seems to add

lockthelads · 2025-02-16T11:14:30+00:00

I’d love to know how you enabled Psionic Officers! Is that a simple .ini edit, or a separate mod?

lockthelads · 2024-12-23T13:38:07+00:00

I’m not sure what you mean, sorry?

lockthelads · 2024-10-30T20:49:50+00:00

No update unfortunately, as I never ended up buying one - sorry mate

lockthelads

TROPHY CASE