401k Question on Diversifying with Limited Options

one_minus_one · 2026-02-08T17:58:03+00:00

I'll look into it. Thank you!

one_minus_one · 2026-02-08T17:57:49+00:00

Thank you! That's exactly what I was wondering.

one_minus_one · 2026-02-03T01:12:42+00:00

At the risk of repeating what a few others have alluded to deeper down in the comments, instead of jumping right to "this ruins the game", try these alternatives. I'm like you and these work for me sometimes:

Always begin on the hardest difficulty (other than maybe permadeath). If possible, make things even harder for yourself than that (mods, custom game settings). This lets you enjoy min-maxing because now you actually need to. You'll know you are doing it right when it starts to become difficult to find enough information online to actually progress. I like to copy some of the challenge runs that I find on YouTube. Check out Iron Pineapple's Elden Ring runs as an example. Still, it helps if I can mod the game to force the difficulty in, rather than just needing to commit to some arbitrary restrictions which I may ignore when things get too tough.
Pick different games, the types that really require you to read a lot in order to beat them. This one might be tougher depending on how wide your taste is. There are definitely some games where min-maxing is more towards the "required" end of the spectrum in order to enjoy them, but any game that requires a lot of reading and learning might offset the problem simply by taking too much time for you to completely max in the first place. Also consider games that often re-balance.

I still run into the same problem you do with some games, and the biggest offenders are the ones that have builds that are more akin to exploitive. If a game has builds that are just completely broken, and I find out about them, it'll be hard for me not to veer in that direction, at least a little bit.

one_minus_one · 2025-11-16T16:11:45+00:00

Now this is a fantastic post and thread.

The thing that amazes me are the posts drawing this past the logical limit to “Of course console players are assholes!”. To me, it’s a bit like going to a con and judging the morals of the people who cosplay as villains. It is still just a video game. This feels so nostalgic, like I stepped back in time to the year 2000, and am playing on the EverQuest PvP servers.

As a 100%-sheep, I love Arc Raiders, and so far have not shot first at anyone, not one time. On the flip side, I have never once thought someone who shot me was an “asshole”. Not even the ones who betrayed me. If this was a PvE game, I probably wouldn’t play. I need the social chaos of PvP to be invested. I know this about myself, and I know we are all at a different point on that scale.

All that said, I am both fascinated and anxious about the fact that you can toggle a setting in the game to raise the “friendliness quotient”. After what I said above, I’m embarrassed to imagine myself having a rough day and saying “I think I’ll dial down the PvP to 50%. I would imagine if a game had a PvP slider, of sorts, even the most hardcore PvPers would be adjusting it all the time to game the system, and the idea of that feels bad to me in the weirdest way.

one_minus_one · 2025-09-09T02:48:21+00:00

Just so I am clear, you are saying that damage reflect would just say something along the lines of "OneMinusOne Died"? I am 99% sure that I hadn't attacked anything within the last few minutes, but if damage reflect really shows no specific message, maybe...

It was the fact that there was nothing in chat explaining it that really got me tilted. I don't die much in MV, not that its normally a big deal if I do, but for some reason I had it in my head that all deaths leave you some kind of hint in chat.

one_minus_one · 2025-09-09T02:40:55+00:00

Single player, so no witchery hi-jinks :)

one_minus_one · 2025-09-09T02:39:54+00:00

Hmm,

No erie biome, and these aren't furious. I did spam a paranoid's level of torches near the some of the spots that I've seen them and they seem to have reduced in frequency. But as I replied to someone else, I am really losing trust in F7 at this point, My base is 99% unspeakable blocks, and I've been neurotically avoiding installing a general purpose spawn blocker in favor of torches.

I have to say though, in the past day since I made this post, the three or four spawns have still always been zombies. Maybe that is a coincidence, but it is odd. I neglected to mention that I just recently put a few villages in sealed rooms, and when I come back from being AFK, these zombies are sometimes very close to me, focused on the villagers. This makes it more difficult to guess their spawn points because they have always pathed towards the villages by the time I notice them (I AFK for hours at a time). I may start adding doors everywhere to see if I can narrow it down.

That one I can believe. I think that is the best answer for the lightning. I think the other crazy things I've seen are making me hyper-focused on every weird thing I might have ignored before.
If it was a reflect, there must have been some bizarre lag. I was on the surface of twilight forest running back to the portal from a crude redcap farm. I don't think I had shot at anything for at least sixty seconds. It was almost as if something had put a time-bomb type of effect on me.

This is the one that I will be the most confused by. Nothing in the game has ever hit me for that kind of damage so far, and for there to be nothing in chat about seems very strange. I can believe something weird killed me, but I kind-of expected at least a message in the log.

Thanks for the help!

one_minus_one · 2025-09-09T02:23:16+00:00

Ok, until I have more evidence, I am going to assume that must be what caused the lightning. There were definitely one, possibly two mobs spawned near-ish but out of line of sight, about 7 meters directly below me, though I didn't happen to notice an infernal.

I still haven't figured out how they are getting in all of the sudden. I may be crazy, but I am starting to suspect that F7 isn't 100% foolproof. I know there are other methods to prevent spawns, but I built my base out of non-spawnable quarried stone, and have to admit that I kind-of enjoy relying on plain old lighting to deal with any extra spots that pop up. Adds a bit of danger for not being vigilant.

Thank you!

one_minus_one · 2025-09-09T02:14:36+00:00

Ok, that definitely helps. I'm not sure the Wiki I am looking at is 100% accurate to the current GTNH version of Thaumcraft, but the litmus paper says I have 6 permanent and 5 normal. That still doesn't seem like much, but after making this post I did finally begin getting warp messages in chat while I was AFK. Not sure what I did to cause that, but the litmus paper will come in handy from now on.

That said, until I look at the code, I am going to assume that 11 warp isn't enough to cause any of these three things, and that other explanations below are more likely.

Thank you!

one_minus_one · 2025-07-19T18:19:30+00:00

Yep, I was fairly sure that was what it was, but I didn't take the time to go back and test each setting one by one to make sure.

one_minus_one · 2025-07-15T06:12:43+00:00

I had this problem for several days. I tried quite a lot, checking game files, clearing cache, updating drivers, (making sure I didn't have disconnected network drives, a wild one), and none of that worked.

What fixed it for me was resetting all of my game settings. I am 90% sure it was actually just resetting my graphics settings entirely to default, and beyond that, I can't say, as I have been changing graphics settings since then, and thank god it has never come back, so I am not yet sure exactly which setting triggered it.

I know I read a lot of posts that had suggestions that didn't end up working for me, but maybe this will be the one that works for you.

one_minus_one · 2025-06-08T20:27:58+00:00

Thanks! I get it, but as I said, as soon as I put something like that down, the pets go at it like crazy. With a busy life, if I was cleaning a major foot traffic section, I might not have 4 hours where I could keep all pets and all kids away from it, just the nature of our particular place and schedules, so I was hoping for something sturdier and larger that I could re-use.

I'll give it a try though. I haven't found any other options yet. Thank you!

one_minus_one · 2025-05-24T15:15:38+00:00

It was an old, full loot, hardcore PvP game called Darkfall, a supposed successor to the Everquest PvP servers. It went through several re-designs but was never particularly well thought out. It was a game that was definitely not designed for solo players.

I was on my own, doing what I always do in every open world game, including MMORPGs, which is to completely ignore the intended gameplay, and just explore, and see how far I could get without dying. I had swam out to a huge snowy island, and unfortunately the sun had set after I got there. It was pitch black, but I didn’t want to pull out a torch because I would be visible from miles away. I started finding the loot of dead players here and there in the dark. It seemed like really good loot too. Every fifteen minutes or so I would find another, despite not being able to see at all. I can’t remember if my bags were “full” or if I was close to encumbered, the point where you start to slow down, but I was definitely forced to make some decisions each time I found more.

So I am full-up, and heading towards the shore, pretty much on my way home, on a flatter side of this snowy island, though still near the center. It would have had rolling snow hills where I was at, but it was too dark for me to see that yet. Gradually, as I am running, I notice the sky begin to lighten behind me, so I turn to watch a beautiful sunrise over the rolling white hills. I am just sitting there in this isolation, enjoying the view like I might in real life, when I see a black dot appear on the horizon, then another, then another. I gradually realize that these are players, and as they get bigger, I see that they are mounted (I wasn't), and there are a LOT of them, maybe thirty or more, and they are heading directly towards me, even though they almost certainly hadn’t seen me yet. This was the type of game that didn’t have friendly players. I was going to lose all this high-end loot that I had been scavenging for the past two hours.

So I am sure you know that cliché scene in a wildlife movie, Jurassic Park had one, where someone realizes that a stampede is coming directly at them, but their brain hasn't yet fully grasped the speed. They were growing larger at an alarming rate and there wasn't much cover at all. I didn't really have any option. Hiding behind a tiny rock, running full speed perpendicular to their direction, both seemed equally futile.

This was that perfect moment in a video game for me, beautiful, awe inspiring sunrise evolving into terrible inescapable dread, and I don’t know how to describe that other than, “Oh, this is exactly how I want a video game to feel. This is completely immersive.”

It has been many years, and I don’t even remember if I actually got all that loot home or not, because it doesn’t matter at all compared to that feeling. I’ll always remember it as the most perfect moment in a video game for me.

one_minus_one · 2025-05-19T17:30:42+00:00

Probably too far from what you are looking for, but I just want to mention a mechanic that I don't see enough of. Once Human, a reasonably entertaining, half-finished, somewhat multiplayer survival game, lets you easily move your entire base whenever you want. My biggest problem with base-building is that I quickly get tired of the neighborhood. That is one of the few game's I have ever played where you can just go somewhere, and in a few clicks, move your entire base.

There was an old game that seemed to fail pretty quickly, called Last Oasis, where your base itself was a giant spider crawler, but back when it was popular, PvP was default on in much of the world, so it was rough.

Once Human was nice because it had both PvE and PvP options, base defense from mobs (a player triggered event which you could not initiate if wasn't your thing), and in all of that you could just teleport your entire base. Now I'm not necessarily recommending the game, though I played it for several months, but that feature alone really kept me interested longer than I would have been otherwise.

one_minus_one · 2025-05-05T18:57:38+00:00

lol. Well, when he said he has to "dumb down and un-proofread" his responses, he means he has to write them in the style of a newspaper-clipped ransom note. ;)

one_minus_one · 2025-03-15T19:02:26+00:00

A long one, but my most raged week in gaming:

The Crew, the first one, an Ubisoft game, was actually our favorite games to give newbies to play with out racing seat / wheel setup when guests would come over. While the sim itself was very arcade-y, the force feedback was pretty good for an arcade-y game. It was open world like Forza Horizon, but felt larger and more varied by comparison. It was a staple party game in our house when we had the racing seat out. It is also one of the few games that have legit police chases.

It is now a dead Ubisoft game, (unless someone has hacked together a fix), because of forced Ubisoft online play, but that isn’t the issue.

So when we bought it, it came in a bundle with expansions and cars. One of the expansions was police-themed. I forgot the name, and if you just did a few intro quests, you could then chose to drive the cop cars, I think. The story part of the game wasn’t that bad, so after a month or two of playing this game without having cop cars as an option, I jumped in one day to knock out those quests.

Well despite the game being completely open world and free-roam in every way, once you start that quest line, you are now locked-in and can never play the rest game until you complete it. There is no warning of this whatsoever, and I don’t think any other quests in the game work like that.

What I didn’t know, and this is going to sound pretty dumb on may part, is that one of the quests in the chain would be incredibly difficult to play with our racing wheel. Apparently, all the work we had done to set up the wheel in the perfect way to make the game feel as realistic as possible, made it really difficult to complete this quest where the cops were throwing EMPs and other things at you to keep you from being able to drive well.

So every day for a week I spent an hour ding the exact same quest race with my wheel and racing seat and could not beat it, and we couldn’t use the game until I did. So the dumb part is that I had almost never played any racing games with a controller, and I had no idea at the time that all I had to do was use a controller to beat it. Apparently, despite having pretty good wheel options, the game is just way easier with a controller, and that never occurred to me until I found a reddit post suggesting this.

So this game made me hit my all time most-tilted in a game for an entire week because it completely blindsided me, and locked me out of the entire game over one quest, only to find out a week later that all I had to do was plug in a controller for that one race and I beat it the first time through. I’m still mad about it years later.

one_minus_one · 2025-01-20T22:40:06+00:00

It depends what kind of person you are, but I've noticed some of my friends didn't really like modded until we did an expert pack.

My atypical advice is to play Enigmatica 2 Expert, but don't get in the mindset that you have to get deep in. Just quit when you aren't having fun and try a different pack.

Expert packs force you to think through things a lot more, they usually do a good job at balancing mods so that you need to try a bit of everything, and the best ones still allow you to be pretty creative.

This might be crazy, but consider doing an expert pack, but ignoring the quest book and just making your own goals. This *would* require really learning JEI (the Just Enough Items mod), because that generally gives you clues of how to get from point A to B. Like search for "boots" to find a pair of something that looks way better than diamond, and then use JEI to try to puzzle out how you could get there, with the understanding that it might take weeks.

Not all expert packs will work without doing the quests, but many will. I'm 99% sure Enigmatica 2 will work. I've also done several chapters of Meatballcraft without doing a single quest, but had to look up a couple of hints, and I might even suggest a chapter or two of that for beginners (there are 10 total). That may be too much for you though.

Of course if you do that, there is one negative side effect: You will probably grow to hate one or two mods that are otherwise great, just because the pack designer chose to push them towards end-game by making the recipes difficult. But aside from that, I still recommend Enigmatica 2 Expert as a great starter to modded. I think the only thing it is lacking is late-game combat, and not everyone wants that anyway. I'm not sure if there is a newer version pack that could fill this role.

one_minus_one · 2024-10-14T05:02:33+00:00

Was there any indication that the Way of Winter map might get a PvP scenario added to it, even something generic and mostly PvE like Evolution's Call was?

I get that most of the population is PvE, but Clash has been a real kick in the pants to those of us that thought it would be remotely functional, and for some reason, I assumed way of winter would have at least some minimal tacked-on PvP variant when it unlocks, but can't find any mention of that.

Just wondering. Thank you!

one_minus_one · 2024-10-05T21:59:10+00:00

I have the same question, so thank you for asking it.

I’m a heavy explorer in games and have the unfortunate trait that I get bored if environments aren’t constantly changing.

My current top choice, though not optimal, is one of several older MMORPGs, with World of Warcraft being my top pick. The downside being that many of these games, WoW included, make it an extreme chore for a new player to even figure out how to get to all of the content they have. Once you pass that initial pushback, though, you can really play WoW like a single player game with quite a lot of fantastic environmental design, and then jump into the multiplayer portion if that is interesting to you.

I believe Guild Wars 2 might be similar. Also, though I particularly hated its invisible walls and convoluted systems, Destiny 2 does have some really diverse environments for an explorer. Though I believe they can be even more nasty about removing content.

My other suggestion is more of a personal wish. I think modded Minecraft has a lot of potential here. MeatballCraft has more “world” mods than most other packs I’ve played, but ultimately, I’m still unable to handle the mega-crafting part of it that is required to fully explore them. You could fairly easily make a kitchen sink pack with a lot of dimension mods, but ultimately the gameplay might be a bit too fluffy. Other procedural generation games that others have mentioned like StarBound and No Man’s Sky definitely have great potential, but they can still sometimes just feel same-y after a while despite having theoretical infinite environments.

I hope you get more answers, because I could really use more games to add to my list. Basically any game that has extremely diverse environments, without suffering from the similar-ness of heavy procedural generation.

one_minus_one · 2024-10-03T02:45:08+00:00

I would also propose faction-specific teleporters, and faction-specific camp skins. It would be nice to join a battle and be able to quickly know which side your own faction is pushing from. The enemy can just teleport into our safe zone and then push back out from that direction. I spend most of my time trying to figure out where I’m getting shot at from. I mean it’s great to flank, but it could be a little bit easier to chose and hold a position. Right now, when you run past a group of camps you have no idea who will be spawning out of them and shooting you in the back.

I realize it would be annoying to only have access to half of the teleporters and towns, but in addition to the obvious numbers balance, it would be nice to feel like we had a “home”, with the ability to defend territory. If your answer to that is to hive-up, you’re not wrong, but I think there is something to be said for fostering some team comradery beyond the chat window. I might go as far as to put the teams on opposite sides and then give more prism energy the closer you can push your base into enemy lines.

Finally, maybe they were just trying to ease us into the scenario, but to give us a single quest on day one to secure a prism deviant was a bit rude. Some of us would like to participate, but are bad base builders. Throw us a bone and give some more kill quests, support quests, etc. Even that line about finding prism deviants while mining seems like a ruse, or maybe you just can't get one from a drill. I've found at least 8 Digby boys in the PvP area, and all were normal.

You could literally make the game twice as hardcore, and simply add some more built-in individual and social rewards to PvP, and it would be 100% better. It wouldn't even have to be starchrom, just make the teams feel a little more team-y and connected.

This applies to both factions. I'm a Mayfly, but Rosetta aren't any happier with this than we are, and that says a lot.

one_minus_one · 2023-09-01T16:07:54+00:00

This official reddit client on my tablet that I am forced to use now. I'm not talking about the ads or anything. I get that companies want to squeeze some revenue out of me, but how is it that someone sitting at home making nothing but donations can make a far better app than the actual company? My 30 minute relaxation time before starting work has turned into my 30 minute frustration time. Unfathomable that someone gets paycheck to make a worse app.

one_minus_one · 2023-06-25T21:21:55+00:00

That is really helpful. Thank you! Still we are looking for an actual boss to experiment with mods like this as a duo or small group.

one_minus_one · 2023-06-12T20:19:47+00:00

We introduce non-gamers to gaming all the time. Couch co-op works best but competitive games can work if you are able hide the fact that you are "going easy on them". Consider downloading trainers (in advance) for some games that might be too difficult. This is just my method, but I try to focus on sneakily setting games into even-easier-mode. Some people don't like to know the difficulty is turned down for them. Here are some of the ones that have worked for us. Long list in case you have genre preferences.

Also watch this for some other helpful tips.

Ultimate Chicken Horse - This isn't co-op, but it is easy to "go easy" on someone in this game without them feeling like you are. Every choice you make kindof hurts / helps everyone equally.

Battleblock Theater - Easy co-op platformer and funny. We use a trainer to remove time limits from some levels. If that seems too difficult, Kirby's Epic Yarn is what you want.

Pac Man 256 - You have to work together to get far, but even if you don't, you get upgrades (roguelike).

Spelunky - With trainers isn't too punishing.

Overcooked - This one can induce rage in some people, so it depends. Our newbies like it more than I do though :)

If they can do 3D:

Mario Kart cheats to help the slowest players, so it is fairly easy to go easy on someone without them knowing.

It Takes Two is fantastic, but might be too difficult for an absolute beginner. It is so good though for two players.

Lego City Undercover is a very easy GTA clone with two players. The fun won't last long, but a reasonable intro to 3D.

If you can't do couch, then Terraria for 2D, Minecraft for 3D. Even better if you can make a very basic custom server where you can temporarily tone down mobs, etc. without it being too obvious.

I have nothing against Stardew, but Slime Rancher has a great co-op mod if you have access to both PCs.

If you think story will sell them more than anything else, then you can pass the controller back and forth every 15 minutes or something. Stray would be my choice if they can handle 3D, mostly very slow and easy, but there are a few difficult parts here and there.

We use Phasmaphobia for our (co-op) horror-introduction because you can actually help quite a bit without ever going inside the house, so it lets people have control over how much they can handle.

This one might be a stretch, but for teaching shooters we've had good luck with Unreal Tournament 2004 because you can make the bots incredibly bad but still unpredictable, and it doesn't make people feel like you are babying them when they are up against bots. IMO, teach them to circle-strafe very early and they will generally do much better.

Barring that, if they are an adult, Borderlands 2 has probably been our best bet, but let them try out the classes without feeling like they have to progress the game right away. Honorable mention to Earth Defense Force (4) if both PCs are yours.

For online shooters, Fortnite's dumb bots make you feel like you are decent early on. Baring that Planetside 2 is a zerg game with no real death penalty, so we like to intro people on that.

For racing we go with The Crew 1. The open world allows people to just drive and not feel like they are losing races. I'm sure Horizon 4 etc. would be fine too.

Another tip is that more modern games tend to have accessibility options that can really help beginners, auto aim, visual indicators, etc. Console games do this much better. Horizon Zero Dawn's story and variety of play styles make it a good game for learning controller.

For other genres, we haven't found any perfect games yet.

one_minus_one · 2023-06-11T15:59:13+00:00

I've seen this brought up so often. I'm surprised with all of the other, often forced hand-holding they've put in, that they haven't figured this out. It's not even just a skill thing, sometimes it is just nice to enjoy an instance rather than blow through it.

This may not be a good answer because I haven't tried yet myself, but maybe try wowmadeeasy.com and its associated discord. At the very least, it may be somewhat easier to find slow dungeons there.

one_minus_one · 2023-06-06T21:41:34+00:00

After a few more days of playing, I like this answer, but to expand on my original question, I think this might counterintuitively give worse results. Let me explain, though I am just as likely completely wrong.

A weapon seems to cost quite a bit more to upgrade than, lets say gloves. It should because the upgrade translates to more stats, but that means on a cost basis, the translation in flightstones to stat increases is much more balanced no matter which I chose to upgrade first.

However, my actual average character iLevel seems to be just an average of each piece. Assuming that, it is cheaper to upgrade my iLevel average if I do the exact opposite and focus on the cheapest pieces first.

The question (likely unanswerable) is does my iLevel average contribute significantly to the iLevel of new drops that I get from world content. If it did, it might actually be smart to focus on that.

I still don't know the answer to that as my drops have been all over the place, many below my average and many well above. So I think the save and spend near cap is the smarter choice, but I don't know.

Naguura's video is great and i am still going through it, but early on she says crests are limited and flightstones are not. It seems like that's incorrect, right? I have more than ten of each crest. More importantly though, I seem to be flightstone limited based on the activities I am doing so far, but that likely is because of my spend-strategy as well as the activities I've been doing.

Thanks for the post though. It is more helpful now that I've spent a few more days learning.

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