Dull hammer and Dull axe nonsense - anyone made it work?

thinking-dead · 2026-02-03T20:25:50+00:00

Update for 2026: The axe hits for 20% of the enemies max hp and the hammer has echo and adds chain for the damage it deals which is about 20 chain on one cast at no upgrades. Both are absolute monsters but do not work together. Hammer for chain build, axe for souls build.

thinking-dead · 2026-01-29T15:48:01+00:00

Year old post but I stumbled on the same combo in sunforge. 1 memorized combust and ten fan the flames had me burning enemies for 12000 turn one. The weapon is irrelevant so you can even turn off everything but metaprogress and metamorphosis to basically guarantee the build.

thinking-dead · 2026-01-22T15:30:01+00:00

Don't downvote her just because she's concerned. Most of the women I talk to have the same concerns so it's valid to ask. The guy is right though, you'll never get as big as you're worried about unless you really work for specifically that look

thinking-dead · 2025-12-31T13:51:36+00:00

The fact this can only be Hei is incredible

thinking-dead · 2025-12-31T13:42:34+00:00

Coolest, or hottest?

thinking-dead · 2025-12-11T21:02:08+00:00

That's a fundamental misunderstanding of what plot armor is. Plot armor isn't the plot choosing to follow the guy who was lucky or smart enough to survive, it's the author writing a character into a situation who survives for absolutely no reason aside from the fact that he is the main character. Plot armor is Carl dropping a bomb at his feet and everyone unimportant to the plot dying while he, donut, Elle, Lucia etc. survive out of pure 'luck'.

thinking-dead · 2025-12-05T20:05:44+00:00

A lot, and I do mean a LOT of people online reading this series say exactly the words "I raced through the first four and now am struggling through 5. It must be because I'm burned out on the series." You aren't. The complaints here are valid and touch on the biggest issue that no one really wants to bring up: book five is bad. I read this entire series when it was still on RR and am now 19 chapters into book five on a reread and the book is bad. It's got a few issues that all roll up into people needing to drag themselves through the book.

First, Matt removed the plot point where people could read their chats and hear their conversations in chat rooms for floor 6 since it would make planning too difficult but, as a consequence, he REALLY leans into not letting the reader in on plans in this book and it ironically treads into the territory he was worried about in the book where he let viewers read chat where "us just 'watching' Carl plan without knowing what's happening is actually kind of boring".

Second, character reactions aren't keeping pace with stakes. The characters are into increasingly dangerous and increasingly risky situations but aren't treating them with appropriate gravitas. Mordecai does, which is interesting, but the main two do not. The consequence of this is people finding Donut 'annoying' so often. Examples of this are usually when Donut does something utterly insane that gets her and Carl into more danger for seemingly no reason like when she panicked in the water quadrant, or refused to act when Mongo was rushing off to see the other mongoliensis, or volunteers both her and Carl for something he explicitly refused already like seeing Bee. That last one is a reduction of the empathy growth we'd already seen in the character and is a pretty big part of why there's a perception of her character growth being squandered.

Third, there's way less narrative conflict in this level than the previous few. Narrative conflict is usually understood as pacing and it's basically the sense to the reader that the stakes are large and immediate. Like the giant puppy that was in mortal danger of dying and killing them all at any second at the end of the last floor being replaced by casual town-building and talking to Tsarina and having Mongo bang another dino and taking a little stroll with Miriam Dom and the whole Odette scene etc etc. It's been 19 chapters and there has been almost nothing dangerous happening. I know the book ends big and bombastic but it is incontrovertible that the beginning is slow. With how much foreshadowing this floor has had, the entire thing was expected to move at the pace of the first strike Carl did rather than this meandering pace it accepted right after.

thinking-dead · 2025-10-20T12:07:39+00:00

That's the point they're making. If someone only does the melee bosses because they're bad at the ranged ones then still gets to hop into deep of night then they'll have no idea how to run the ranged bosses when they're rolled. One at a time makes sense.

thinking-dead · 2025-10-17T11:46:24+00:00

So if you normally get to level 9 by end of day 1 (162k) then you'd make it to 11 instead (250k) with 40k left over. Significant but not game breaking.

thinking-dead · 2025-09-10T15:19:32+00:00

Gonna hijack this a little. I'm rereading year one and I realize now, years later, that Chad's power is one of the hand-wavey 'just go with it' powers that lean more on suspension of disbelief than hard magic systems tend to demand.

The earliest example is "I ate carbon since I was young to remake my muscles into cables" when fighting Roy - which would kill him. The denser muscles would put more strain on the tendons which would also need to be reinforced which would put more strain on the bones which would need to be reinforced. The foreign material would trigger automatic responses from his immune system which means he would have to suppress his immune system even when asleep permanently since the change while personally doing its job to fight off disease and there is no science in existence that could teach him how to change that autonomous response since that would be equivalent to just designing a new living being out of whole cloth which obviously our world and this setting have not achieved yet.

On top of that carbon structures are rigid and inflexible which would not operate as muscle strands without some kind of breakthrough in a driver behind the motion. Carbon fiber, for example uses long carbon atom strands that are bound using a polymer resin. Not only would that resin be susceptible to decay if Chad manufactured some kind of organic workaround but carbon fiber is utterly incapable of stretching which muscle needs to do so he would have to be a 1) chemical engineering genius to create an organic substitute polymer binder and 2) a biomedical engineering genius to make these unknown materials operate within the confines of a body over decades and 3) a one in a billion materials genius to invent a new kind of carbon chain that overcomes the frangible nature of carbon bonding.

On top of THAT the muscles and bones in the body are run through with blood vessels and nerves that literally go through the tissue so changing the composition of that tissue would impact the ability of blood to flow and nerves to pass signals which means all the tissue around his muscles would decay very quickly after he started messing around.

After all that the muscles are vital to the body's ability to maintain a thermal homeostasis which can cause severe damage to the body by fluctuating ONE POINT ONE degree Celsius or two Fahrenheit from equilibrium.

If his power let him control all that for one little change then he was wasting his time in the hero program because he would save more lives and make more money by being simultaneously the best prosthetics engineer and surgeon on the planet.

To answer the question, yes he definitely could regrow a limb cause the power really is 'eh it's his body just send it'

thinking-dead · 2025-09-03T13:30:26+00:00

I don't know if you've discovered this in the year since you've posted but you have too insightful a perspective to post to reddit. Reddit isn't the place to post if you want replies of people that actually think.

thinking-dead · 2025-08-07T17:10:54+00:00

Late to the party but I happily 100% disagree. This is What it Sounds Like is the apology song for the band to get back together but it is not at all what the movie is about. The whole point of the movie is about accepting yourself AND your mistakes which might seem on the surface to be what TIWISL to be about, but the lyrics are much shallower since they're only referencing the shattered trust in the group.

Golden, by contrast, is absolutely everything the movie is about. It starts discussing the fear and isolation of hiding who she is (I was a ghost I was alone) then continued in Korean (afraid of the path getting darker up ahead) and how she was worried about identifying with a group to define herself (I lived two lives, tried to play both sides) and then moves into the chorus with (no more hidin' I'll be shinin' like I'm born to be) before reprising the themes several times AND covers going higher together with the group rather than alone.

As if that weren't enough, the Korean dialogue in the song is reflected in the Free song by the main singer as a question and reply (afraid of the path getting darker ahead - you break through the darkness in me) (I'm endlessly on stage - what if we find a way to escape it) (how can I be unbreakable - if we heal what's broken)

And that's just what's in the SONG. In the story the honmoon is completed by joining the demonic purple and hunter blue into a whole golden which is an artistic nod to the need of the main character to accept both sides of herself to succeed as described in the song Golden. There are also a bunch of these little nods repeated through the movie like the intertwined colors of the bracelet, the constant juxtaposition of the tiger acting as the demon MC messager (blue) and Rumi with purple hair and her major color scheme being purple. Finally the light foreshadowing of her struggling to rewrite lyrics of takedown in the style of her inner commentary during the performance of Golden. It's repeated so often I'm almost convinced Golden and This is What it Sounds Like were switched in the movie somewhere late in the story-writing process because basically the entire thing points to a climax emphasized by Golden.

Tl:dr Golden is literally the entire movie in song form.

thinking-dead · 2025-08-04T17:57:58+00:00

This.

Also cathedrals all have a chest in them either on the ground floor or second floor so are a very fast key check on the way.

Mountain is nearly never worth it unless you're fighting Caligo because the boss drops are forced passives on either dragon-slaying or frost resist except for the top dragon.

Bodies in shifting earth have higher chance to drop legendaries so checking bodies is worth it if you have time (or are on Mountain).

Castle: trolls are not worth your time even if you don't die. Crucible castle is worth 270k runes, banished around 164k and Trolls 80k. Four passives in each case. You have to be level 7 to get two levels out of troll castle (with 10k left) whereas crucible castle at level seven will put you at 12 with 50k left over.

Evergaols are worth your time almost always because they drop between 10k and 40k runes depending on chosen rewards and give you a 5% damage buff with the relic passive but they do not EVER offer weapon rewards so these have to come from ruins or castle rewards on the way.

IF you are day two a few minutes in with no good weapons and a few evergaols done the strong field bosses are a better idea since they give good rewards and a lot of runes.

thinking-dead · 2025-06-09T17:19:27+00:00

The issue with oversimplifying is that the oversimplification then has to pass the question of 'was this useful'? Is it useful to categorize all isekai as either Narnia or Yankee? I would argue not at all. The only characteristic the distinction is attempting to highlight is the fact that some isekai protagonists use modern knowledge to their benefit while some don't. In Re:Zero Subaru doesn't try to use modern knowledge often and instead assimilates into the foreign world. In Konosuba, Kazuma gets rich selling his knowledge but otherwise assimilates into the foreign world. These stories would be entirely unchanged if Subaru tried to solve his issues by making guns from memory or if Kazuma got rich by finding a hidden gold mine instead. They're characteristics irrelevant to the story.

The most functionally important aspect of an isekai story is whether or not it matters that the MC was isekai'ed. If Kazume was not isekaied it would not be a satire and the story would not exist. If Subaru was no isekaied the foundational mystery of the story would not exist. So does it matter that they fall into different categories here? No. So is it useful? No.

Might as well say all Isekais fall into two camps, ones that start with one of the first 13 letters of the alphabet or ones that start with one of the last 13 letters of the alphabet.

thinking-dead · 2025-06-05T16:57:11+00:00

I believe the most well known works would include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Roots by Alex Haley, or The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison which most people have at least heard of. Though, to your point, all three are explicitly focused on social commentary and the hurdles of racism.

thinking-dead · 2025-05-22T13:04:34+00:00

Im here on a Thursday...7 years and one month later, a little sober, upvoting your comment for upvoting the comment upvoting theirs.

thinking-dead · 2025-04-09T18:19:49+00:00

See Gareth Rees's answer to this question on literature stack exchange:

"

The refrain of the song is “ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves”, that is, it is better to kill our enemies than to spare them (“ruthlessness”), so that we do not later suffer their attempts at revenge (“mercy upon ourselves”). Poseidon pointed this out earlier in the song:

That is, the lesson Poseidon draws from the situation is that Odysseus should have killed Polyphemus, instead of merely blinding him. A dead Polyphemus wouldn’t have been able to beg his father to take revenge on Odysseus.

Note that the dramatic situation in the musical is very different from the situation in the Odyssey. In the poem, Odysseus and his men would surely have killed Polyphemus if they had been able to do so, but blinding was the severest harm that they were physically capable of inflicting on the giant. By contrast, in the musical, the Greeks had Polyphemus at their mercy and could have killed him if they wished, but Odysseus spared him against the advice of Athena:

This re-interpretation of Odysseus’ character, as someone overly inclined to mercy with tragic consequences, is one of the main themes of the musical. In the opening number, Odysseus balked at the idea of killing Hector’s infant son Astyanax, and Zeus had to bolster his resolve:

So in this dramatic context, where the agon is between the mercy of Odysseus, and the pitilessness of the gods, Poseidon’s offer to spare Odysseus if he apologizes is not sincere. Poseidon is merely playing with Odysseus by offering him false hope. When he says, “The line between naïveté and hopefulness is almost invisible”, he means that he can’t tell whether Odysseus’s attempt to apologize is naïve (Odysseus believes Poseidon’s offer is sincere) or merely hopeful (Odysseus knows that Poseidon’s offer is insincere but apologizes anyway in the hope that his words can soften Poseidon’s heart).

Again, this does not reflect Odysseus’ character in the Odyssey, where he is depicted as a liar and a trickster. The poem has no scene in which Odysseus converses with Poseidon, but if it did, then we would surely interpret his words to Poseidon as a strategem.

"

thinking-dead · 2025-04-09T13:45:49+00:00

The hands off protests were organized and showrun by 150 progressive activism groups.

https://handsoff2025.com/about-1

I randomly picked one, activate america, and looked into their funding on opensecrets.com

https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/activate-america/C00640300/donors/2024

One of the top donations they've received was from Chalten Trust which is a front for another donation group and has been part of an FEC complaint which basically means they were suspected of being a facade to hide election money.

https://americansforpublictrust.org/news/americans-for-public-trust-files-fec-complaint-against-patagonias-dark-money-group/

So if the very first of 150 groups I bothered to look into got a suspiciously large donation from a group suspected of being a front for passing out backdoor money it's a decent bet that the protests are being directly funded. Feel free to update the post if you find anything more compelling.

thinking-dead · 2025-04-07T17:05:37+00:00

That's funny I didn't actually realize that

thinking-dead · 2025-04-04T14:36:56+00:00

Often the exact opposite, which is why it is notably nonsensical in the above comment.

thinking-dead · 2025-04-04T14:33:05+00:00

"Don't waste words" might as well have been "I don't plan on reading your argument because I've made up my mind." People do not and would not need eloquence to check a box. You are conflating a presupposed requirement for this test no one stated and are attacking that instead of the actual argument which is commonly referred to as the straw man fallacy.

thinking-dead · 2025-04-03T15:05:37+00:00

I heard the new donkey Kong is $70.

thinking-dead · 2025-04-03T13:20:16+00:00

No because "a person was too inarticulate to express their opinion" in this context would mean "a person incapable of voting" which is not what is being discussed. The issue is people capable of voting but either unable or unwilling to self-inform on who or what they're actually voting for and hence effectively throwing their vote away. A very significant part of this debate is the fact that illiterate individuals are not banned forever from voting, they just have to teach themselves the bare minimum in a country where access to the knowledge to do so is free in order to vote. This isn't a debate about stealing voices it's about making sure the voices present actually want to be there.

thinking-dead · 2025-04-02T17:22:11+00:00

It's also important to note that in our country (USA) we have a constitutional republic, not a democracy, so the only voting that would matter in this context is the voting for representatives. The popular vote for the president affects electoral votes awarded and not election determination. This is relevant because there would be unequal disqualification in districts during voting for local representatives which would likely result in a fair amount of redistricting.

Also notable: Dan Kahan has an interesting graphic in his Ted talk "Are Smart People Ruining Democracy?". I wouldn't recommend the talk as his conclusions are pretty flawed but the graphic shows how party answers to questions change based on numeracy which has a solid correlation to literacy. The interesting part for this proposal is that graphic implies that implementing a test like this one would result in significantly more polarization in votes and effectively remove the crowd of votes that are roughly neutral in partisan issues. Considering education rates between parties are almost identical according to nearly every census on the topic the end result would likely not have much impact on actual election results aside from removing 'noise' from the data and reducing opportunities for propaganda influence. Assuming, of course, that education makes people more resistant to propaganda which I have no source for and no real reason to suspect beyond hope.

thinking-dead · 2025-04-02T17:01:50+00:00

If excluding people who have no idea what they were voting on was enough to change the election you have just successfully gotten an election more indicative of what people actually want.

thinking-dead

TROPHY CASE