RenOS
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
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5mo ago
Ah yes forgot about that! That's a great skill as well. It also gives a lingering buff which can be quite substantial. Best on weapons with fast attack speed, since the buff is a static 90 holy dmg.
There is a reason people call Limgrave the longest tutorial in any game. Your options open up a lot once you leave.
But the heavy crossbow can drop from the crossbow wielding mobs in Limgrave, there is a short bow for sale in southwest Limgrave, and there is the light crossbow for sale on the weeping peninsula, which is also reachable quite early.
I can also give you directions on how to get the clawmark seal, which can also be done early. But that might be considered a spoiler.
RenOS
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5mo ago
Prioritizing vigor is a good idea for a beginner, but that doesn't mean you need to put everything into it. With 18 dex, I don't see why you can't use a bow? Otherwise crossbows are a good beginner ranged choice. The early game is always the most limited phase, and even full mages can't really cast all that much then.
Btw, don't put too much points into mind until your flask is substantially upgraded. You usually want just enough FP to take full advantage of the flask regen, not more.
RenOS
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5mo ago
Golden Vow is great! Early on 40 FP might be a lot so spirits are a better use if you don't have enough, but later it's not much and it will stay strong since it's a % dmg/def buff.
The scaling changes are also what you want if you play an hybrid build anyway.
- Do you take advantage of buffing and utility spells? That's one of the major advantages of FTH vs INT. FTH direct dmg spells being a bit more clumsy is just evening the playing field. Imo it is FTH that has much more variety. Just golden vow + health regen spell before every boss as a default is great, and there is so much more
- You use the wrong seal or have insufficient FTH, however you want to look at it. Godslayer has the best scaling at that lvl, or the gravel stone seal for lightning spells specifically
- for bosses the black flame incants are great since they have a % based DoT that can burn through a boss quite fast. Otherwise you could go for high dmg variants of spells, but those generally need better timing
- Do you mean the winged scythe? If yes, I also switched away from that for lack of dmg.
- Spirit ashes? The right ones are quite useful for spellcasters to cast some of the more involved spells
- talisman setup? Though generally better for def than offense
Edit: Also, be mindful of boss resists, -40% dmg matters! FTH has lots of possible dmg types, so take advantage of that. So, good that you are starting to use breath spells
RenOS
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5mo ago
Yeah, that's what I meant with the first paragraph. But he indicated wanting to actually use sorceries, so I didn't expand further on that.
There's probably some way to play a high INT+secondary stat with an appropriate weapon that scales with both.
Edit: Just looked it up since I didn't quite remember it, there are INT+FTH and INT+ARC staffs, so these are technically hybrid, but not really relevant for you. No +STR or +DEX or others sadly.
Edit edit: The demihuman queens staff has high base scaling and low INT scaling, so that would be the correct staff for a hybrid physical build I think.
But generally FTH is easier for hybrid builds in two different ways: First, there are more explicit hybrid seals that make your incantations scale with another stat, and second there are much more utility incantations that have no or very little scaling. Golden Vow for example is a great generalist dmg/def % buff that has no scaling whatsoever, anyway.
RenOS
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5mo ago
You need a catalyst to use spells. For sorceries that would be glintstone staffs or that one sword. But afaik sorceries always scale only with INT, so it's a difficult choice for mixed builds.
RenOS
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5mo ago
Just looked it up, my build in ER was a str/fth hybrid with golden halberd + clawmark seal as the main hand weapons. Buffing, manaless short range, mana-dependent long range all in one neat package that scales with both attributes. Thanks to str I can use large shields in the offhand. Especially on higher lvls you can also branch into other seals/incantations for other dmg types.
But it's just one example, there's plenty of viable mixed builds.
RenOS
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5mo ago
Dark Souls games (and ER is really just DS4) are generally designed so that they can be beaten with simple straight builds, broken weapons/skills and coop by even the filthiest casual, while a hardcore player can still challenge themselves with low LVL builds and meme weapons/skills. So absolutely everything is doable, it depends on how much work you want to put in. Mixed builds have a wide range from broken to meme depending on the details.
Generally, in DS games it's easiest to make builds by starting with a particular (upgraded) main weapon you like and maximizing its scaling + put as much as you need into survival. Then you can also use some supporting weapons, skills and spells that happen fit into that scaling, with maybe some accomodations for min reqs. There are also some melee weapons with ranged skills. Generally for lower lvls I like to put more into survival and use a high base dmg weapon with poor scaling so that I have more flexibility later on if I find a weapon I like. But if I remember correctly ER has some reskilling option so you should be able to switch entirely even if you chose poorly.
I can also give you some more concrete tips if you have something specific in mind. Later I might post my own mixed build for ER if I find the time.
RenOS
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5mo ago
Lots of people do different things at different times for different reasons. Generally though they do leave positions they hate, but I still agree with you that their behaviour is a bit more self-serving than they really want to admit. Usually, nobody really forced them into that in the first place, and it wasn't even necessary. It just made things easier for them. They often stay just long enough in those questionable but very well paying positions to get fuck-you money, and then pseudo-retire to more socially-conscious positions that earn enough to get by, and they donate just enough for it to be noteworthy, but not enough to really feel the hit all that much.
But tbh I think this is to some degree hardwired human male behaviour, and to some other degree simply game-theoretically optimal. If you're young and unestablished, meaning you need to carve out your place, you want to be aggressive and competitive, which includes morally dubious behaviour; When you're older and already established, you want to be cautious and close off as many avenues of attack as possible. You can be cautious from the start and probably will do fine, but not reach quite as high; You can stay aggressive and keep the top a little bit longer, but you risk losing at the young man's game catastrophically.
RenOS
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5mo ago
My impression based on left-leaning friends & acquaintances (of which I have very, very many) is twofold:
The first is a general aesthetic. When people draw images for the green future, it's just a really nice-looking, organic neighbourhood, farms with happy animals, it's clean, people still live in modern-style housing right next to a beautiful forest. On the other side, when climate change and fossil fuels are shown, it's dirty, it's ugly same-looking cities with large heavy industry, animals in pain from ugly, pustulous wounds, people in cramped apartments far away from any green (which probably is dead anyway). On that level, it really is just the good ol' politics of in-favor-of-everything-good-against-everything-bad; If given the choice, absolutely everyone would take the former over the latter, if there are no other ramifications (which at least aren't shown nor talked about). Woke is mostly the same; It generally sells itself first and foremost on extremely benign-sounding slogans and tries to just ignore, talk away and suppress the mention of any and all problems. Of course trans is just about letting a small minority live as they please, of course women's rights are only about not being taken advantage of by evil men, of course anti-racism/colonialism is just about giving formerly oppressed groups their freedom back, etc. And the - primarily - women who make up the bulk of the support really aren't unpleasant for the most part, often the opposite, they just want everyone to get along, everyone to work towards the obvious, common good and to exclude the minority of evil men. If you just avoid calling their politics into question - which in daily life will be 99% irrelevant anyway - they are usually exceptionally helpful and pro-social. But, of course, they have a massive, noble-lie shaped hole (and also, they can be irritating busybodies, but that's more manageable).
The second is a general distrust of the profit motive. Several of my (mostly male) friends who are much more successful than me (managing-your-own-company or high-tier BigCorp middle-manager successful) have had more than enough personal experience of engaging in what they perceive as anti-social behaviour just to keep their company/section afloat (stuff like cutting out a newly emerging competitor with legally grey tactics, deliberately hiring badly-paid interns with the promise of a permanent position over and over, actively managing a funnel into addictive behaviour for your freemium game, etc.). They genuinely feel bad about this and want to restructure society so that this isn't done anymore in the future. They're rarely communists and are aware of its failure modes, they want markets, but their experience makes them believe that a many of the arguments against renewables are as bullshit as the old pro-smoking arguments; If you put up just the right limits on the market, we will have a great, green future!
Tbh the latter isn't even that far from my own position; It's just that I'm much more suspicious of government intervention blocking progress and protecting old, wasteful structures in an unholy BigState BigCorp marriage (also frequently called the cathedral).
RenOS
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6mo ago
There's degrees of petty criminals. Plenty of them aren't actually nearly as ballsy as they like to pretend. If the NP store just does literally nothing, Aldi just having a guard who knows their faces and doesn't let them in might be enough. But it's hard to tell.
RenOS
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6mo ago
Adoption has changed a lot over time, as multiple people here can testify. In times of war and scarcity, there will usually be more well-adjusted orphans than families wanting to take them in, so if you adopt you're likely to have a good experience.
However currently families wanting to adopt far, far outnumber well-adjusted orphans. It's not rare that you have to wait years, and even then you'll more likely than not end up with problematic kids. We know a couple who waited and eventually gave up because the only cases they got offered were so horrible that they didn't think they'd be able to handle that.
One of my colleagues helps out those foster families willing to take in the hard cases that are the majority and it's just sad. Teens with the mental development of a three year old are among the easiest. One girl just doesn't sleep at night, screaming for most of it. Others are so heavily physically disabled that they need help with everything.
Maybe you get lucky and the kid you adopted with fetal alcohol syndrome will turn out mostly fine except for minor develpomental deficits. Maybe you get super-lucky and an actually healthy kid somehow finds its way into the foster system. But generally it's hard and thankless and more likely than not, you will get kids that are dependent on support for life. You probably will not make a big difference, either.
Adoptions from the third world work a bit differently, especially from asia, but this can be very expensive.
RenOS
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6mo ago
You need to distinguish some things.
First, you need to treat technological and social progress separately. Our civilization has been steadily progressing technologically for several centuries at this point, but it has been one of the biggest lies/self-delusions that the social changes happening alongside were consistent improvements. Some were, some weren't, and mostly it was just a change in the trade-off curve the ramifications of which we still probably haven't fully experienced and can't appropriately judge.
Second, the current state and the pace & direction of change; I agree that western society increasingly seems sclerotic, overregulated and overinterdependent. Nevertheless, the peak we have reached is pretty damn impressive, and even rome took centuries to fully break down, with golden ages lasting decades, long after its eventual fate seemed sealed.
Third, private and public. The reason why conservatives lean happier is that they are, on average, grillers. If you just ignore the public dysfunction, pretend there is nothing you can do about it and focus on ways to improve your own life, it's actually quite easy to get by and be happy. Imo this is the reason why civilizations peak; After reaching some level of prosperity, it's much easier to just pay off dysfunction to not bother you instead of fighting against it. At first it's a great deal, since in % terms it's very little, and there is a lot of inertia about not falling into dysfunction staving off the bad incentives. But what is incentived, grows, and eventually it's "suddenly" substantial, but now so many people depend on it that there is now way of getting rid of it without a revolution. Usually the society is still overall quite prosperous, so they just try to limit the growth at this point, or if you have really competent & conscientious people in charge they may even manage to find a way to slowly whittle down the dependency a bit. But it's a lot of work for almost no return for yourself, while frequently making lots of unnecessary enemies. So, the smartest and most competent at best actively avoid politics & just improve things in small localized ways, or at worst take advantage of the situation to redirect more stuff their way while paying off the important interest groups.
This is afaik in artifact of excluding violent deaths in the statistics, not the reality on the ground. Obviously it is silly to exclude violent deaths but include childbirth if you want to understand the differences in life expectancy between men and women, yet it is all to common. See for example this letter in the journal of the royal society of medicine.
In many known societies, males had far higher violent deaths rates, to such a degree that adult women would frequently outnumber adult men. For a particularly extreme example see the paraguyan triple war, at the end of which women outnumbered men 10:1. Only in long peace times you would have higher life expectancy for men. This also isn't just due to large-scale wars with modern weapons in the more developed societies; hunter gatherers often have even higher violent deaths rates "just" due to skirmishes.
Obviously we do not really have reliable data of actual life expectancy for most of history, but I wouldn't be particularly surprised if the ancestor statistic is a simple result of enough men dying a violent death sufficiently early so that the 2:1 is simply the gender ratio in the adult population.
RenOS
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6mo ago
Zooming out a bit, the UK has currently similar problems (exploding general healthcare/welfare costs leading to low-priority care being sidelined) despite an establishment politician winning, germany has similar problems despite an establishment politician winning, but somehow in the US it's Trump's fault. Even the specifics - rural hospitals getting disproportionally closed - are the same. Remember, healthcare cost graphs over time look like this, and this is % of GDP, so it's even more crazy in absolute terms. That growth is not sustainable, and indeed is starting to not getting sustained much longer. That doesn't mean Tump's cuts aren't higher than elsewhere nor that they have no negative effects, but the framing here is quite questionable.
RenOS
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6mo ago
He is explicitly saying that it did happen as commonly understood in the broad strokes, though, and the he is jewish himself. He just thinks it was more work camps were starving to death is considered a bonus, and less industrialized killing. Which is still something I disagree with - we have some evidence of the Nazis putting in much more resources into killing than would be reasonable in a war, especially towards the end - but it's hardly comparable to outright Holocaust denial.
RenOS
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6mo ago
Just my 2 cents, but thanks for sticking around despite having some gripes and despite feeling stress about it. Admittedly on the first read I thought that this would be yet another flameout "I'm taking my ball home because y'all don't behave the way I want", especially since I strongly disagree on Turok (in short, he has always been a bit contemptuous, but completely independently of the mods recently I have found his posts increasingly difficult to parse, it's often unclear who he is even arguing against, he mixes viewpoints that may be aligned against the woke but are otherwise quite distinct, and all of that with what I perceive as a clear sneering tone). But your further posts make me update in the direction that you're engaging in good faith.
Dating apps are still optional. You can meet people through partying or general friend groups and depending on the region that is still somewhat the default. There are many cross-sex hobbies you can use as a starting point. Work has gotten quite complicated, so I wouldn't advice it, but some people still manage somehow.
But generally, women are picky & fickle and always will be. They want to see social proof that you're great, as a partner, as a worker, as a friend, as a father, and their default is rejection.
RenOS
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6mo ago
I tried giving Worth the Candle a shot, but didn't like it. Maybe it will be subverted later on, but in the first book I found the implied worldview of the author not self-aware enough, sometimes bordering on the comical, which is especially bad considering that it's obvious the author wants to go for something more philosophical. The basic internal story was OK, good enough so that I finished book 1 without feeling like it was a slog, but I also have very little motivation to carry on. So, I guess it's at least still better than the Wandering Inn, which did turn into a slog just a few chapters in.
RenOS
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6mo ago
For me at least, my wife is really into it. Of course it shouldn't look completely uncared for and not too long, but generally she doesn't even want me to go back to stubbles, clean shaven is not an option at all. It's simply unmanly in her mind. Keeping a medium-length beard is also less work than clean shaven.
RenOS
something is wrong
6mo ago
He did say "any other", though, which roughly matches with my impression. AFAIK it's also true that there are specific combination that are over-and under-represented, and white male asian female is extremely overrepresented.
Context: I wrote this some time ago when I was sufficiently annoyed with contrived drowning hypotheticals. I had a lot of fun writing it, but then didn't know where to put it. I've never really written a short story before (except way back as a teen, for other teens) so no guarantees that this is actually any good. But it seemed stupid to write it out fully but to not at least post it somewhere afterwards, so here it goes. @mods, if you consider this inappropriate here, feel free to move it, though I didn't want to start a thread on anything I'm not sure is any good.
It’s a beautiful morning. You’re wandering next to the river which serves as the natural limit of the city. You want to visit granny; Well, not your REAL grandma, but when you were a teen, she was there for you. She hasn’t been doing well, forgetting things, especially later in the day.
You pass by a bridge, closed off with a fence - though it's sufficiently damaged that one can get past if one wants to -, showing a sign that reads “trespassing will be punished by fine”. This used to be one of the most important, most used roads out of the city, but a year ago it has started to be plagued by suicide attempts, so the city decided to block access after a public pressure campaign.
A little further, a group of tall and athletic men is playing beach volleyball. A priest tries to shortly talk with them, is rebuffed & leaves, shaking his head.
You will probably not reach granny. Steve (that’s what you call him in your mind, at least, it’s not like you really know him) will soon jump of the bridge, as he does everyday, and you will jump in to save him. He will be taken to the hospital for the day, where you also have to wait until someone can take your report, which gets logged into the system, and you will get released, by which time it’s too late in the afternoon.
But something is different today: You’ve seen a policemen, in the wild, who isn’t already occupied! You go straight towards him.
You: Hello, Officer, do you have a moment?
Policemen: Yes, sir?
You: A man will soon go on the bridge and jump off. Could you arrest him for trespassing before he has a chance to jump?
Policemen: Sir, I can’t do anything just on hearsay.
You see Steve entering the bridge from the other side.
You: See, that’s him!
Policemen: Sir, according to our anti-escalation training we are not allowed to arrest a person for only trespassing.
You see Steve jump from the bridge. The group of men doesn’t care, the policemen pretends to be busy writing something and the priest just looks at your sternly. You sigh, and run to save him. When you leave the water, the policemen walks up to you and gives Steve a fine.
——
It’s a morning. You’ve had enough. Screw Steve, you’ll just walk faster, and then it’s going to be someone else’s problem. You pass by a masked man, looking off into the sky. The priest walks up to you.
Priest: Hello, son. You want to leave that poor person to his fate?
You: Why don’t you ask someone else?
Priest: You know they won’t listen. What do you want to do now, instead?
You: I’ll visit my grandma.
Priest: Just visit? You know a life is more important than a visit.
You: Do it yourself, then.
Priest: I’m old and frail. Besides, I’m saving many lives here; Anytime someone wavers in his faith, I restore it, so that they can save the needy. If I were to do it myself, I’d be taken in for the day.
You wasted so much time on the discussion that you see Steve jump from the bridge. The priest looks at you sternly. You sigh and run to save him.
——
It’s morning. This time you won’t get derailed; You put on headphones and pretend to neither see nor hear the priest and walk at a brisk pace. When you walk past, you notice that a small coffee shop has now opened up at the shore of the river, with the priest sitting at a table. After you passed by, the priest goes to the masked man, who was just looking at the sky again, and talks with him. He gets up, runs after you, catching up almost instantly, grabs you, and slowly drags you towards the water. You shout at him, but he just screams “fuck you” over and over, until he has finally dumped you into the water, where Steve is already flailing. You sigh, and swim over.
——
Morning. The headphones broke after getting wet. At the shore you pass by a journalist explaining something to a camera, with the bridge as a backdrop. Later at the coffee shop, you see the priest and the masked man sitting together drinking tea. Enraged, you confront the priest.
You: What the fuck? You can’t just tell someone to assault me!
Priest: Oh, I was just telling him about that poor man who will jump off the bridge. It’s not my fault that he reacted that way, and besides, I couldn’t have stopped him anyway.
You: But you could at the very least report the crime!
Priest: Of course I did, but the man had already left when the police showed up. You also have to admit he did it for a noble goal: To save a life. So I can’t say I’m too unhappy.
You stare at the man right next him.
Priest: This nice young man just told me that he can’t even afford a tea. So I invited him.
You: So you claim it’s not him?
Priest: How would I know? He’s wearing a mask. You know, Corona.
You, towards the man: Are you ?
“Of course not”, says the voice that screamed “fuck you” yesterday. You look at him, and flip the table. Tea sprays everywhere, both are cursing, and you take the chance to run as fast as you can. You run along the shore, but at the place where you could have sworn is the path to granny’s house, there is a fence instead. A sign tells you to just continue, which you do, until you reach a dead end between the shore on one side and the fence on the other. You see Steve flailing in the water, screaming. You sigh, and jump in.
——
This time you take a large cutter with you. At the coffee shop, the priest is now being interviewed by the journalist, which he visibly enjoys. The beach volleyball players, meanwhile, are back today and trying to garner the attention of the (admittedly quite attractive) journalist. The masked man is nowhere to be seen, so you just walk fast while looking back, making sure you’re not being followed. Carelessly, you bump into something, and turn your head around to see … the masked man. His eyes glimmer with anger. You look at him, then the cutter, then at him again, and swing it in a large arc. He gets an arm up, screams in pain and goes to the ground. You run past, not looking back, breathing heavily. You made it! Nothing can stop you now!
——
“REPORT: ANOTHER SUICIDE ATTEMPT AT THE BRIDGE Calamity struck just as our investigative journalist was taking an interview for a documentary about the suicide bridge: Another attempt was made. According to trusted sources, one particular local man, present at the scene, already knew in advance. But instead of intervening, he struck an innocent bystander down, breaking his arm, and fled the scene. He was later found nearby harassing an older woman, after he gained access to her home by cutting open a fence. The police is still investigating his motive and the connection he has to her, as she claims to have never seen him before. He is currently in custody on charges of assault, vandalism, trespassing and harassment. Fortunately, another bystander playing volleyball jumped into the water, saving the day.”
The priest takes back the paper he gave you.
Priest: You know child, I don’t think you’re so bad. So I put in a good word for you. The man you assaulted has also agreed to drop charges if you cooperate.
Do you take up the Priest’s offer and do community service at the bridge?
I know that it's hard, but this imo really needs to be changed. It's bad enough for progressives to be regularly downvoted (even if I may disagree as well) but probably unavoidable, but longtime posters constantly getting filtered without mod action has to be supremely frustrating and I probably would also leave eventually.
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