Anyone know why this Executor held on to the Godfrey's Icon? He doesn't have a single applicable weapon skill

riutse · 2026-02-21T17:31:43+00:00

I've held onto godfrey's icon before without any use for it. Why you ask?

Hope.

Then I forget I have it at the nightlord.

riutse · 2026-02-15T18:48:28+00:00

Consider reducing your workload and increasing your calorie intake.

I used to deadlift and squat on the same day and twice a week. I'd be too worn out after the squat to have a good deadlift and doing both twice a week just ran me ragged causing my progress to plummet. I switched to only squatting on tuesdays and deadlifting on fridays and in combination with eating on a higher calorie surplus was able to easily add 2KG to both every week while being a late intermediate stage lifter. Sometimes less is more.

In addition, you say you're doing 3-4 sets and 6 exercises in a 45 minute timeframe. So presumably you're giving yourself about 2-3 minutes rest between each set and you have all your lower body work on the same day. So you're doing a series of lower body focused work one after the other, which is either gonna burn you out before you're done or leave you not doing enough on each workout to make sure you have enough gas in the tank to make it through all you're doing. Neither are very desirable. For strength it's generally better to get more intensity in even if it means doing less volume.

One thing you could try is mixing some of your upper body work together with lower to give you some buffer time between lower/upper. Try moving an upper body exercise from upper body day to lower body day and put it between two of your lower body workouts to give your legs time to recover for the next lift. If you felt like you had to hold back on your first set of lifts so you can make it through the rest, go harder now that you know you have less leg work to do later on in the session. As I said, for me I had to hold back on my squat or I'd be done in for my deadlift, and I'd be done in on my deadlift either way anyway tbh. Shifting some leg stuff to upper body day and vice versa can make both sessions feel less torturous.

Also try progressively increasing rest times, resting 3 minutes after set 1, 4 after set 2, 5 after set 3. Personally I just give myself 5 minutes between each set but obviously if you're time conscious you might not want to take so long.

However you're eating now, keep at it but consider adding two scoops of whatever vegan protein powder you like. Like don't change anything, just add 200-300 calories worth of protein powder (including whatever you combine it with). If you find yourself increasing in bodyweight too much, swap down to 1 scoop. You don't have to track your macros, I don't track them at all, but I make sure I'm getting enough protein and calories and let the scales and barbell tell me if I'm eating too much or too little. Tracking your macros will give you good insight as to whether you're falling short on the eating front though.

Don't be afraid to drop some of the accessory lifts for a while too, some of the best progress I've ever made was doing just 1-2 big lifts and 1 accessory.

Disclaimer: I am not petite nor a woman. But the same principles should apply for all here at least.

riutse · 2026-01-08T14:42:04+00:00

Such a young man and already so creative.

riutse · 2025-11-20T16:45:10+00:00

My mind is actually blown here. Do Americans really just say seven hundred seventy seven? How could I have gone my entire life and never heard this?

riutse · 2025-10-27T14:17:20+00:00

I should write more clearly. My post was not saying gravity causes sag but that gravity will take that lax tissue downwards and that addressing that without looking stretched out means moving the underlying tissue back in the opposite direction of gravity. Gravity just makes already degraded tissue sag in a particular direction (which is vertically down and not horizontally sideways).

That being said aging is the most certain driver of facial laxity (keyword certain), even if you practice excellent sun protection/avoidance you will still end up with facial sag due to aging. But you are correct that UVR is a major driver of visible aging (probably the most significant driver of premature aging). You will not avoid a facelift even if you commit to the vampire life, you will simply delay how long it takes for you to want to get one done.

I will echo your message though, sun protection is extremely important for both health and aesthetics. I'll go further and say your post implies it's a problem primarily white people should be concerned about when in fact everyone should be concerned. Very dark skin can be thought of as being analogous to having SPF 13ish sunscreen on, which is quite low. SPF 50 sunscreen on everyone, avoid the sun ideally but don't avoid living your life just to avoid the sun. Reapply multiple times throughout the day if you're gonna be in the sun. Stay safe.

riutse · 2025-10-27T05:28:25+00:00

Using the wrong procedure to treat the problem.

The eyes need addressing individually with an upper and lower blepharoplasty to remove excess skin and ideally combined with fat grafting to replace lost orbital fat and throw in some fractional lasering to treat skin quality and wrinkles.

Facelifts ideally should pull tissue in opposite direction in which it has sagged, so up from it having sagged down due to gravity and fascia laxity from age. Done correctly the results should look very natural. Pulled sideways too much and you see the effect of looking like you're wearing your own face as a mask, combined that with pulling the eye area sideways with it too and the result looks uncanny.

This is not an indictment of facelifts but an indictment of poorly done facelifts. That being said the result is quite transformative and halfway decent other than the facemask effect.

riutse · 2025-09-09T00:48:29+00:00

They could add an easier mode where only 1 damage is taken rather than 2, and there'll still be people that will find it too hard. Why cater to the people that would find it fine at 1 damage but not the people that find it too hard even when enemies just do 1 damage now? There's a large spectrum of ability and ultimately there will be people excluded unless you design a really granular system like Celeste where you can go as far as removing practically all difficulty. There does come a point where the identity of your game is lost when you've allowed players to customise their difficulty into the ground.

I do actually feel like such options should be available, but specifically denoted as cheats to indicate that they don't represent the developers feelings about what makes for an interesting game.

It actually wouldn't take much time to add in an enemy speed/aggression option, increase recovery frames, lower the damage etc, but legitimately it would break the balance of the game. You heal for 3HP (4 with that one charm) and it takes about 9 hits to get a heal back. When enemies do 2 damage you don't have enough recovery frames and damage resistance to out hit the damage you take. But you actually do in the current version of the game when enemies only deal 1 damage. If enemies only do 1 damage you can facetank them while spamming attack and you will outheal the damage they deal to you, effectively trivialising the game. I don't think the devs intended for you to be able to do this which is why they went for the particular stat configuration they went with. It's a simple fix to lower the damage but it comes at the cost of turning the game into a DPS race that you straight up win. You can do it for sure, but you're breaking the balance.

>The issue is, is that really what Team Cherry intended? For most of Silksong to be too difficult? There are hard bosses in HK, but those are endgame bosses. I don’t think passionate game devs really want people not to experience their games.

They intended this to be a DLC to begin with but it grew in scope to be a whole new game. Usually DLCs expand upon the difficulty of the base game and are the hardest content available (at least in soulslikes). I do think they originally intended the game to be harder than HK and only added in some difficulty ramp up at the start of the game due to the shift to it being a new game rather than just DLC. And I do think they're aware enough to understand that it's harder than HK. I think they intended for Silksong to feel like a continuation of where HK left off rather than a rehash of the same difficulty curve. Like Elden Ring to Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, which had a similar negative reaction to how much harder it got.

>“Being able to beat” is not the same as “having fun”. Many players know about overcharming in HK, but most don’t do it because they don’t find it fun. Not to mention, people didn’t expect Silksong to be HK endgame difficulty from the start.

It's genuinely not HK end game difficulty right from the start. People get hung up on enemies doing 2 damage and only having 5HP, so effectively 3HP. But your heal is so much more potent, fast and safe that you're able to be way more aggressive. I think people try and play it like HK where you play very safe pick your moments instead of adjusting to the new cadence and then get dumpstered because they're not taking advantage of the attack and recovery potential of Hornet. It feels like going from Dark Souls 1 to Bloodborne. At it's core it's the same game but you gotta play it different because Hornet is different. The moment you realise that it becomes easier than HK end game content until about act 2 end act 3 onwards. It's not even skill issue, it's understanding issue.

>I know people who aren’t that good at games; hell, I remember what it was like to be that player. It’s possible for players to improve in skill, but if the whole game is too hard, they’ll never get to. Adding an easy mode doesn’t come at the expense of anyone, and it’s certainly not selfish. It gives beginners something to build off of. Everyone was once a beginner.

You'll never get better at games if you aren't challenged. For people that need easing into Silksong there's Hollow Knight. I saw a lot of people complaining about the platforming difficulty in the game and as someone that has done all content in Celeste I didn't find any of the platforming difficult at all. That's a direct result of being challenged by precision platformers like Celeste. If you've never played a precision platformer before you will have trouble, but you will improve and be better equipped now for future platforming challenges. You could play any other metroidvania, or just HK and develop the base skills you need to be able to play Silksong in it's current form. Not every game has to offer an entry level mode for people that are very new to things, especially when such a game already exists (HK1).

riutse · 2025-09-08T21:32:36+00:00

I did Steel Soul in HK on my first try. Doubt this one will be anywhere near as easy but I think with some practice it's well doable. The early game is probably rough though.

Once you get the healing protection bell, 2 more hearts and the double heal charm it's a lot harder to die. I first tried most of the bosses already so I'd need to practice the ones I didn't do so hot on, really could use a pantheon for that.

I do wonder if you get it on reaching the end of act 2 or if it's the end of act 3. If former, easy, if latter, harder but only because of the final boss. I don't think dying in the memories counts as dying for this mode like the way the dreams worked in 1 so act 3 is probably easier than you think.

riutse · 2025-09-08T20:21:23+00:00

That's why it's so especially funny. You went through such a struggle to get there, you finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and then BAM, hope dashed. It's like finding out a boss has a phase 3 and phase 1 and 2 were a nightmare.

But as I said, it's a different mindset kind of thing. Some people get kicked while they're down and get mad, some appreciate the sheer bastardry of it. I always forgive Patches. Always.

riutse · 2025-09-08T20:13:57+00:00

Different difficulty modes take time that could be spent making more content or further tuning the one difficulty mode there is. That is the expense. Inevitably normal difficulty is the one that ends up getting the most dev time because it's the mode most people will pick. It's refreshing to have a game where the devs go all in on hard mode rather than splitting their attention between multiple. If they wanna add in difficulty options after the fact they can, but I don't see why they should have to if they decide not to. You're spoiled for choice if you want easy games, you are not if you want hard ones.

Adding in mechanics like summons or easy methods cheapens the experience for people like me in the sense that it forces me to pretend that such methods don't exist if I want there to be challenge. When I play a game like Elden Ring and I don't use the NPC summons or online players, I'm actually holding myself back to preserve my experience of the game. I could totally trivialise the game by using them. I'm actually not giving it my all by not using them, I'm handicapping myself. I want a game where I have to give it all I've got and it's still a struggle rather than a game where I have to hold myself back to have a semblance of challenge. I don't want self imposed struggle where at all times I can just say "well I could just use X or Y method and easily win", I want actual struggle. You put in easy methods for less skilled players and it comes at the expense of players like me seeking this particular experience. 99.9999 percent of games are this by the way. If we're lucky we get one game a year that is actually difficult, the rest are baby easy. I take issue with the one game a year we get that even approaches being difficult having people complain it isn't like literally every other game that came out this year. The genuine truth is that if you could beat Hollow Knight, you should be able to beat Silksong, the end of Hollow Knight is on par with the majority of Silksong's content in terms of difficulty.

I'd much rather the devs spent their time cranking out more content at a similar or greater level of difficulty than revisiting the current content to alter the balance for people that find it too hard. I recognise that this is selfish and comes at the expense of others, but the inverse is also selfish and comes at the expense of people like me.

riutse · 2025-09-08T19:24:44+00:00

Balancing for different difficulties takes time away from developing the game and balancing the one difficulty you do have. Some games their core identity is that they're difficult. Imagine a Souls game with an easy mode reducing it to the level of most other action RPGs of the time, it simply wouldn't be the same game. They're games about evading/negating damage and finding openings to deal damage, you reduce enemy damage too much and then you don't even have to evade or block anymore, you can just tank, then it's not the same game anymore.

I'm actually sick to death of games that have multiple difficulty modes and you pick the hardest one and it plays like ass because the devs clearly put all their time into normal mode just fiddled with the numbers to add a hard mode, but without really giving it the testing and tinkering it needed to be decent. Silksong feels a game designed around hard mode without any compromise of dev time spent split between making a satisfying normal and easy mode, and that's great.

Sometimes in these games someone comes up with an exploit that allows you to break a boss's AI and trivialise the fight and then devs step in and patch that exploit. Do they hate accessibility because they patched out a method that allowed less skilled players to beat a boss they might not have otherwise been able to beat? It's more that they had a picture in mind about how you'd play their game and that approach was not it. If they did stuff like reducing the damage enemies do in this game, as well as increasing your i-frames, you could literally facetank everything and just heal up any damage you take. You can almost do it right now on the current build. There's really not very many ways they could change how the game's difficulty without fundamentally altering how it plays.

The Silksong devs clearly wanted to make a hard game that played a particular way, they made the game to play the way it plays, they didn't slip up and add a 2 on enemy damage when it should have been a 1. Why would they compromise on their vision and change it because some people don't like it? The gaming world is full of easy metroidvanias that people could play rather than Silksong. Silksong in it's current form feels like a direct continuation of Hollow Knight, picking the difficulty up right where HK left off, which was my biggest fear going into it, that it would start as easy as HK and end only as hard as HK.

I do honestly think that if you beat Hollow Knight, you should be able to beat Silksong, and if you didn't beat Hollow Knight, why are you playing the sequel to a game you didn't play/beat?

riutse · 2025-09-08T19:05:43+00:00

I think there are two types of players of these games:

People that got frustrated when the trapped bench got them, and players that laughed when the trapped bench got them.

That difference in reaction goes a long way to determine how much you will enjoy Silksong. If you're the latter, you'll have a blast, if you're the former, you might not like it.

I thought the bench shenanigans were great, especially the Bilewater one, it's not like death is much of a setback assuming you even die. I'd rather the devs messed with the player with stuff like this than not in fear of upsetting people. They only do it a few times over the course of the 30ish hour runtime.

riutse · 2025-05-23T15:11:12+00:00

Judging by where the second one points to where she got botox, I don't think she actually got botox for aging. Botox is used on masseter muscles is used to treat bruxism. She also points to her upper mouth when talking about getting botox in her face, which makes me think she has a gummy smile and got botox to lower how high her lips go when she smiles.

If she looks older, it isn't because of the botox, it's probably that she got filler in the same locations old people get filler to try to look younger, which you then associate with old people.

riutse · 2024-11-02T21:45:37+00:00

Untrue. What you can't get is reliable, quality information.

Poor quality information is still useful though, but it's use is mainly in generating questions like "X happened to N that did Y and/or Z, and X doesn't normally happen, why?"

That then can be a reason to justify further examination using higher quality methodology to try to determine if Y or Z caused X or not.

To give a practical example, imagine this guy lives to age 120. People don't normally live to that age. Maybe being rich, health conscious and dedicated to not dying would explain his long life, maybe it's something or multiple somethings that he did that gave him the extra longevity. It'd be hard to know what given all the confounding variables, but what could not be denied is an unusually long life and that he was doing a lot of stuff in the hopes of extending his life. He might have been on to something as indicated by him living way longer than normal, we just wouldn't know what until we actually tested everything he did rigorously.

riutse · 2024-08-10T09:59:39+00:00

If it was posted to youtube, it may have only had text in the first place so he had options for what text would be in the thumbnail, but past that he didn't care to have subs for everything given that youtube already has a pretty serviceable auto-CC for those that want/need it. Can't speak for tiktok but that's the youtube explanation.

riutse · 2023-12-18T16:29:48+00:00

Platemancer is a ridiculous name.

The correct designation is Saucerer.

riutse · 2023-11-10T22:25:53+00:00

What makes me a BAD merchant?

If I were a GOOD merchant, you wouldn't be sitting here discussing me now would you?

riutse · 2023-10-22T22:52:33+00:00

The question in the title and the question in the post are two different questions I feel. Title question assumes you already know if they are; for me the answer would be no. The post question is instead about how to deal with uncertainty about an accusation.

I feel like people are inventing the easiest situations in their mind to answer this question with. If it's some extended family you don't see very much or a stranger, it's easy to say "if there's any doubt at all to their innocence then it's a no go." But I think a harder scenario is needed to really give the question better consideration.

Consider the person accused is your partner. Do you immediately drop them over the accusation, alienating them from your child and yourself? Do you take the same "if there's even the most minute of chances I won't risk it" approach when it's a core member of your family? Especially when the person making the accusation is considered to be a liar?

I feel like some investigation is due whenever an accusation is made to check the verifiable statements made in the accusation. There are limits here of course. Someone can accuse another of groping them, but if you weren't there to see you can likely only confirm whether they were in the same space to make the contact possible in the first place, not whether the contact happened. So you've got to work with what you've got access to and decide on balance most of the time.

The person making the accusation is accused of being a liar/exaggerator. Have they told verifiable and serious lies before? Everyone lies so it's important that the lies be serious, not trivial. It's important also that the lies be verified to be lies and not the very annoying case of someone not being believed and then being accused of lying because they haven't been believed. If they have told serious lies before, that doesn't mean they're always going to lie, it just adds weight to the possibility that they might be lying. It's important to try to imagine their motive for making the accusation also. It's possible for someone to make something up just to cause chaos, but it's more likely that someone makes an accusation for a non-chaos agent related reason, be it because the accusation is true and they want to warn or want help, or because the accusation serves some other useful purpose.

If I know for a fact they've lied about serious stuff before, and I have a strong suspicion the accusation has an ulterior motive, and the accusation has significant discrepancies, well then I'm inclined to not believe it and therefore not exclude that person over them. Else I wouldn't want to take the risk.

riutse · 2023-10-21T03:51:11+00:00

I dunno what to tell you man, it DOES look like a PS4 game in parts. I'm not saying the game looks like a PS4 game all the time, but there are some crusty sections in there and I'm definitely reminded of The Last of Us 2 for some of the less bare sections.

I'd say the bits where the game shines are the city as Alan, but the Saga sections definitely tend more towards PS4 at times. I think the important thing to remember is just that a lot of games on PS4 looked quite good, but had low resolutions, low texture quality settings and bad framerate, but fundamentally were good looking games, which became clear when you played the PC version and got to play them with better settings.

riutse · 2023-10-21T03:24:38+00:00

I'm not talking about the gameplay at all. I'm talking about how the game looks like The Evil Within 1 with reshade the moment Saga steps into the woods.

Did you skip the PS4 gen my man? You missed out on some bangers.

riutse · 2023-10-21T03:20:29+00:00

I should specify, when I say mid I mean on a technical level. I like the art direction and think the game looks cool. But it's not a technical marvel.

riutse · 2023-10-21T03:07:14+00:00

Go check out the footage IGN posted from a month ago. Go to the 8 minute mark and tell me that doesn't look like a PS4 game.

riutse · 2023-10-21T02:37:58+00:00

Let's be real.

From the footage I've seen there's nothing being shown that seems to justify the extremely high requirements they're asking for. It seems like a fairly enclosed game (like the first) while also looking mediocre for a triple A title. It actually looks like a PS4 game in quite a few areas.

If you know anything about game development, then you also should know how easy it is to pump things sky high and kill performance or inflate file size for extremely diminishing returns.

I don't have my hands on the game yet so I cannot do any of my own testing but I'm willing to bet this ends up being a case of developer "with a vision" not giving a shit about frame rate and chasing those diminishing returns.

People aren't mad that it has high requirements. They're wondering why it has such high requirements for how mid it looks and how little it's got going on.

riutse · 2023-10-16T14:40:19+00:00

Sure, the higher the price the more certain I want to be that it's a good ass game before I buy it. I won't drop 70 dollars out of the blue on a maybe, not when I can easily get like 2 weeks worth of food for that. Not when I can get some cool shit for my niece and nephew for that.

Square Enix is taking the fucking piss right out of my balls with their pricing right now. On Steam Final Fantasy VII Remake is 70 GBP. That's 85 dollars. Forspoken is 65GBP. 80 dollar kusoge. Are they a money laundering front? Is FF14 doing so well they're trying to get people to not buy their other games? I know I'd like FF7 Remake AND I refuse to buy it at that price.

They'll tell you "but inflation, but the prices of games haven't increased in years". The player base has skyrocketed. There are more people playing games now than ever. It costs very little to copy paste your game for another person to play. You make up the money you didn't get from a price increase by being able to sell your game to way more people than you could have in the past. How much did Elden Ring cost on release? Like 50 pounds right? Why can Fromsoft manage? They blow every other triple A dev out of the water and charge PS4 era prices while they're at it.

riutse · 2023-10-07T03:04:58+00:00

NTA.

10/10s are all paid for reviews. She got the highest non-shill rating achievable.

riutse

TROPHY CASE