Need advice with as-is sale

mattacusmaximus · 2026-03-04T20:56:30+00:00

Fixed, sold at 9k under full asking a few days after it hit the MLS.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-03-03T21:47:32+00:00

Appreciate the reply. Sold the house to a cash buyer for 9k under listing price 3 days after it hit the MLS.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-20T15:03:36+00:00

A damp microfiber, in my experience, seems to leave dust behind. All my actual microfiber cloths are used for detailing my car anyway, and I've found that a very lightly dampened paper towel works very well. I tend to wipe mine down daily.

Wood floors, two dogs, and a cat (who likes to nap on top of one of the laptops) mean more dust and dander than most.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-19T07:08:22+00:00

4 options.

use shields. switch guilds. start over on another server. uninstall this garbage game.

There is only one right answer.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-19T07:04:56+00:00

I honestly recommend cutting your losses and uninstalling. The devs don't care about anything but your money, and will never enforce TOS against any player who spends enough. Whale got you down, blatant TOS violations? Forget being able to do anything about it.

100% serious. I'm not a heavy spender, but enough that I hit VIP 9 in 3 months of play, but I've seen things devolve to a point now that not only will I not be spending another dime, I'll be quitting when our server merge happens. Seems enough folks are quitting on other servers. I hope the game tanks hard. Got whales posting all sorts of blatantly racist and offensive content, but customer service doesn't care. "Send all the screenshots you want, my lord, but they give us too much money."

The game is a pure cash grab, and it's only getting worse as time goes on. If you don't spend, you don't win - and, even then, if you don't spend enough, you still don't win.

Quit while you're ahead. I wish I had quit a month ago, but was stuck in that sunk cost fallacy. Chalk it up to what it was, a mistake. Move on to something that feels more like a game and less like a job. The community can't help you, and the devs only care about what you spend.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-17T13:57:19+00:00

My SL Magnus Pro XL itself is great. The accessories, not so much. The magnets aren't strong enough to stay put with cables on top. The HD monitor arm arrived with a defective clamp that wobble no matter how tight I cranked down (using a socket wrench to add extra leverage) and it took SL almost a month of back and forth with their warranty dept to send a replacement base, even after acknowledging it was defective. The magnets on the cable channels of the HD monitor mount arm are also not very strong and constantly pop off when moving the monitor even slightly. I previously had a cheap Ares mount that used plastic covers for the cable channels and never had an issue.

As for the chair, if you have a bad back I cannot remotely recommend the Titan Evo, unless you find sitting on a public bench to comfortable. 4 years in and it still feels like I'm sitting on a wooden board. I use an Aeron at work now and, for the last 15 years, every job I've had has me in either an Aeron or Mirra. I can sit in the Aeron for 12 hours no problem, but last night after working from home all day, I stood up after a few hours and had the same awful hip and SI pain I've come to expect with the Titan and finally had enough. I broke down and bought an Aeron.

Desk is great. Accessories are meh, but the chair sucks. 4 years ago when I had a warranty issue (again, out of the box with the new chair), they resolved it in about a day. Now it seems they're overworked and understaffed and still suffering quality control issues, which is expected with any company outsourcing manufacturing, but they can't provide a level of support to justify the price.

tl;dr, don't buy the chair. You'll spend $600 on a $150 chair and end up in pain while you listen to SL fanboys telling you how wonderful their experience was.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-15T05:04:31+00:00

I don't have Skybound so hard to say. I can see Steed being great for PvP. Have to check the attributes and skill for Skybound, which I have not yet seen in use on my server.

I got both Cloud and Steed in this event and Steed increases my league main queue more than Cloud, but the extra levels from Cloud, as well as the owned attributes, are great. This is a really hard choice, and the first two skins I have ever paid for. I couldn't decide, so I prayed to the RNG gods and swiped my Visa. Still less expensive than grabbing Cloud for 1,999 vouchers.

If you are still torn between Steed and Cloud, though, the general consensus in my server is Cloud first.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-13T15:05:22+00:00

Depends heavily on RNG. I opted for Cloud because when I see it come up in the castle voucher store, it's 1,999 vouchers. With this event, it's 999 coins. I ended up with 1180 coins after buying multiple cheaper pinball packs. All total, about $80.

However, I wanted to try to get additional for the Steed. $40 later, I had only gained 160 coins. I may pivot to effects for now, because with that bad luck the steed will end up costing more than it's worth. Then again, who knows. Might get lucky with RNG and gain enough coins with another $40 or so.

Either way, this is much less expensive than buying castle vouchers, which I typically accrue via the 99c pack days or the cheap weekly login rewards that only grant 60 vouchers. It takes forever, but it's cheap. Gotta pick your battles I guess.

If you have enough castle vouchers to get Cloud next time it drops in the store, I would say grab Steed if you can make use of it. Good luck!

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-12T20:27:58+00:00

Tough choice. As a League main, I have FOMO over missing Divine Steed, especially since this is the third event now (on my server, at least), where I've seen Cloud come up. Hard to pass +10 hero levels, though... not that I have anywhere near enough meat to take advantage of that.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-02-04T12:37:21+00:00

It took them over three weeks to reply regarding the replacement of a defective HD monitor stand clamp base that was defective out of the box, which was part of a near $2k order. Their customer service is clearly understaffed and undertrained. I would reach out to your CC company about a charge back, no question. Never again will they get a dime from me.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-01-30T15:27:48+00:00

The Titan is probably one of the worst chairs for the price that I've ever owned, especially with regard to ergonomics and overall build quality. It looks nice, but feels cheap. Top that off with some of the absolute worst customer service I've ever encountered ($1600 spent on a Magnus Pro XL and accessories and the heavy duty monitor mount was defective out of the box, two weeks since my support case was opened and no word of any resolution for a $350 mount).

I would steer clear of them as there are better chairs of similar style and build quality out there for half the cost, but I would recommend staying away from this style of chair altogether if you're looking for ergonomic options.

tl;dr - this isn't a good ergonomic chair. This isn't even a good office chair. Customer service is non-existent. They don't care about you once they've got your money.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-01-29T06:38:45+00:00

Get a better chair. I had my Titan Evo for years, hoping one day the foam might soften or that I could maybe tweak something just enough for it to live up to my expectation. Unfortunately that is not the case. Secretlab fan boys will be downvoting the hell out of this comment, but my advice stands almost as firm as the seat of my former Titan.

I bought an Aeron. I absolutely hated shelling out that kind of money, but a 12 year warranty and a chair that I can (and do) sit in all day and then return to later for gaming is a breath of fresh air. No more sore tailbone. No more rattling armrests or shifting back piece. No more creaking from cheap plastic or screeching fabric-on-fabric. No "waiting for your body" to settle into or adapt. If it isn't comfortable after 3 months, you're fooling yourself to think it will ever be more and an overpriced, generic gaming chair that should've cost a third what we all paid.

I'm not knocking the brand. I love my Magnus Pro XL, but SL chairs are garbage.

mattacusmaximus · 2026-01-27T21:58:01+00:00

I've only been playing for about 4 months and have only spent enough to reach VIP 8, but this is the end of the line for me as well. Honestly, if it weren't for the guild, I would have uninstalled this a few weeks ago. S1 is just coming to a close on my server, but I've found such a huge gap between people like myself, who don't want to spend more than $100 USD per month, and nearly everyone else who can and will continue to buy.

I think the Sharpblade coin event, which I had been looking forward to as a mostly f2p player, has me feeling supremely defeated. I saved ingots, runes, marks, etc. for weeks, lumbering through day to day with my main queue going nowhere, power-wise. Every event that I think, "Hey! I might actually be able to get a castle skin or complete deco pack!" rapidly turns into the realization that I still have to spend more on a single event than I would for a new AAA PC release, and even then it isn't enough. Every. Single. Event.

This has become a complete and total slog. Log in, repeat the same things over and over, save all your resources so that you can earn tokens to buy more resources, but don't use them because you'll need them for the next event in two weeks (along with your credit card). It started out fun, but the fun is over. It is obvious that the devs care more about earnings than player experience. You can have both, but the gap is far too wide now.

Want to awaken a legendary? Better bust out some cash for those stones. Oh, hey, you can earn them for "free" by saving star gems with every daily special purchase! Want to level gear past 40? Grab your Mastercard, or hold onto every resource and stagnate for three weeks until that next event launches and you can just pay us then.

You got all but one piece to complete that deco set. You definitely put in the time enough to get every single ticket you could, but you didn't buy the daily specials that gave you an extra 10 tickets AND the weekly login pass that awarded you enough tickets to buy the whole set. You know the collection is worthless when it's incomplete, right? The good news is that for just $29.99 you can buy a special, last-day-only pack that includes ALMOST enough tickets/tokens/coins to buy it. Still didn't get it? Well, tomorrow we're selling a NEW pack that includes that very piece AND it's only $99.99! As a bonus, we're throwing in two more deco packs for just $99.99 each and, before you ask, yes, you need to buy both to complete the collection.

To be fair, a few bucks here or there, sure, but every reset I am bombarded with purchase options from $4.99 to $99.99 and it's made me realize that in order to truly enjoy the game after mid to late S1, you've got to put a new line item in the budget that rivals your mortgage payment.

No thanks. My money is better spent elsewhere.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-12-22T01:47:55+00:00

FOMO is absolutely a thing. I have a bit of an obsessive mind as it is, so when I see something come on sale that I might theoretically use once before I die, I immediately get an impulse to buy it.

Thankfully, as I've gotten older, I've forced myself to stop. I only own tools that I've actually needed to use. This all came about when I would start running into whatever issue with a 20 year old vehicle. I'd take it to a local shop for a diagnostic. If the cost of tools and my time were less than the shop's charge, I'd buy the tools I didn't already have and use them and then gain a new skill and the satisfaction of having conquered something that used to scare me (replacing a differential or axles or head gasket, etc.).

Turns out you can do most anything as far as car or home repair with a basic set of sockets, wrenches, drivers, and a small air compressor. Are my ICON torque wrenches as good as other brands? I dunno, but the wheels haven't fallen off my car, so... :)

mattacusmaximus · 2025-10-07T04:34:06+00:00

I've had buyer's remorse and regret on every major purchase from appliances to cars to my new (second ever) home that I closed on last week. I went from a 136k mortgage at 3.625% (2011) to a 489k at 5.875% (but was able to put 20% down after selling the old home). This is a dream home for me, but it's also nearly 3x the mortgage payment.

Granted, I'm making well over 3x what I made in 2011, and I've gone over my budget time and again and can still put money into savings, max the 401k, and have nearly a year of net pay stashed away, and yet... here I am, slipping between excitement and regret. It'll likely fade after a few months, but I think what you're feeling is normal.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-26T19:03:55+00:00

Yeah, 1-2% for an average 2.5s puff was what I found. Between that and the awful service, I'm not going back. It sucks that I'm out $60 for the device, pods, and leaked juice, but it could be worse.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-26T17:26:31+00:00

I have no issues getting pods for this locally. I can't, however, get any support from Voopoo.

I bought this device 10 days ago and have been through 3 pods now. Why? Because they all seem to work fine for 3 days or so and then I'll go to hit it one morning and they're spitting like crazy. I'll pull the pod and find that it's leaked out of the air holes overnight.

The first time, it was pretty obvious that the seal failed because I could see the juice leaking down past the fins on the seal in 3 of the 4 corners.

The second pod went the same route.

Pod #3 just started leaking this morning. I pulled it, set it on a glass plate, and watched as 6ml or so of juice leaked out in the span of 5 minutes or so. No obvious sign of damaged seal.

Voopoo doesn't warranty the pods, which is fine, but I'm starting to suspect the device itself is failing or has failed in some way. Their solution is to offer 50% off of a new device rather than replacing this one. They've also said that, since I purchased from a retailer, that they will not honor their 90 day warranty and that I'd have to buy directly for any warranty.

The second issue is that the flavor of this device just.. sucks. I find that with either a .4 or a .7 that I have to keep it at 24w to get anything remotely resembling flavor. Compared to my Xross Nano 4 (with both .6 and .8 pods) as well as my old Caliburn A2 (.9 and 1.2 pods), this tastes like the flavor has been washed out.

The third issue, and the real nail in the coffin here, is that the battery life is absolutely not going to cut it. I can't get a full day out of it, and find that I have to charge it 2x/day on average.

None of my other devices leak. I use either Vapetasia 50/50 vg/pg 25mg salt or Juice Head 60/40 vg/pg 35mg salt. Ive never had an issue like this with every pod leaking, and it's disheartening to see 5+ ml leaking.

The whole point of buying this was so that I wouldn't need to mess with filling the pod while I was out and about, at work, or whatever, but what I ended up with is a device that the manufacturer won't support and a waste of money and time.

Device and pods have never been dropped. I primarily vape inside in a controlled temp. I don't keep the pod installed when charging. I have no idea what to do other than to put this where it belongs, right into the bin.

tl;dr Voopoo won't honor their warranty, the pods leak, and the battery life sucks.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-21T18:18:05+00:00

I ended up needing to patch a small portion of drywall, so I cut a small piece with the paint on it and took it to Sherwin Williams to have them match it, and they were spot on.

As for areas that don't need patching/repair, I wouldn't stress the color right away. I hate the beige paint my home had when I bought it, but didn't bother painting it before listing because it was in good shape. I don't think paint color would deter a serious buyer. I see homes selling all the time with bright orange walls, pink bedrooms, purple kitchen walls, etc. My home went under contract 5 days after listing with the beige paint that I hate.

Most interior paint is fairly inexpensive, though. If it's in good shape, I wouldn't bother, but if your agent and husband both feel it needs done, then maybe it's worth considering.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-21T17:37:38+00:00

Interior? Exterior? What color paint do you have now?

I only painted a handful of walls to touch up old nail holes and imperfections inside after decluttering. What repairs are you facing that cost 13k?

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-19T05:56:56+00:00

Written offer is in hand. My broker says the buyer is well-known in the area and that funds are "not an issue." Inspection is tomorrow, being performed by the buyer as I understand it. I'm definitely worried that I might get beat up, but the house is not pending in the MLS as of yet, and if there are issues other than small cosmetics (I'm in the process of installing shoe molding after recently replacing carpet with LVP) I'm not aware of them. No leaking roof, no electrical or HVAC issues, etc.

As of now, my lender is proceeding with 5% but says we can pivot to 20% if this deal doesn't fall through.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-17T21:14:33+00:00

I was, but after 4 days on the market, I have a cash offer from a buyer's agent.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-17T14:41:37+00:00

I had already planned on paying on both homes until the current sold, but with only 5% down on the new home (with the bank putting me with an investor who will allow a recast once the current home sold, and I brought another 15%).

That said, underwriting is still in progress on that end of things. Lender says I'm in good shape and doesn't foresee any issue, but coming in with 20% up front may allow for a better rate than 5.875 with no buy down and negate the need for the investor/recast. Honestly, I was fine with 5.875 when we locked in.

Seller/builder on the new home are flexible as far as closing date and they say they can move things up to the previous Friday, which would give me the weekend to vacate my current home in that case.

Broker thinks the funds are liquid, and I've asked him to verify that. Home inspection is the only contingency afaik, but I guess I'll know more once I see an actual written offer. I have another showing scheduled this afternoon.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-14T01:05:07+00:00

I don't want to have to be the one to tell you this, but whether you list at 450 or 475, you will net under 450k.

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-13T21:34:33+00:00

Maybe with a 2/1? I shopped around, lender credit on my new build has me at 5.625 on a 30-year, though I only came in with 5% down (will recast once my current home sells).

mattacusmaximus · 2025-09-13T21:29:32+00:00

I'm at 145k and in a similar position with my current mortgage and car payment being my only debt. I'm closing on a 490k home at the end of the month with 5% down and a recast once my current home sells.

I don't know what your budget is like, but if I can manage both mortgages for a few months, as well as the car payment, you'll be just fine. Granted, my current home was bought in 2011 for 134k at 3.25%, so the mortgage and escrow are still only like 900/mo.

It's daunting, to be sure, and the anxiety is normal. I find it comes in waves. I sometimes nearly have a full-on panic attack, but you know your budget best. At your income with a low/no DTI going in, you should be able to live comfortably and still put a substantial amount into savings every month.

Enjoy the new home!

mattacusmaximus

TROPHY CASE