Bjorn

Nope, not permanent, you can enter and leave as you want, just like any other covenant. I left it when I got to my next boss door, so that I could go in as a white phantom and get a preview of the boss. Plus there is no benefit to being in it for bosses, you don't get awestones, just a harder boss. I wish I had been using it off and on throughout the game now, whenever I didn't need to actively be in another covenant. That's likely what I'll do with any future characters. And anything you've done in a covenant seems to keep its progress when you leave, unlike DS1, where you would lose like half of what you had contributed when you left. I did contribute a couple of stones before I left, and it certainly looks like I kept my level on the leaderboards. It does take a few minutes for the leaderboard to update though, so if you give stones and then immediately check, don't freak out that they weren't counted. I really liked the rat boss as well. I have a question about that hallway tip.

Advanced edition comes out next Thursday, Apr. 3rd! I'm ridiculously excited about this. New race, new ships, new ship systems. And hopefully a few surprises they haven't announced. I can't believe that they wouldn't go ahead and throw some new events in as well.

I'm not usually this dense, but On Boss and unique weapons....I haven't been that impressed yet. There are a lot more weapons that take balanced stats, so if you're min/maxing stats, those are typically out. There are a lot of them that are neat designs, and could probably be powerful. But Boss weapons take 15 Petrified Dragon Bones to fully level up. I only have like 7 of those and I'm most of the way through the game. I'm figuring I've either missed something, or they have to be more common soon. I haven't seen any dragons yet, and I know there are dragons, somewhere. I've made most of the boss weapons, briefly played around with them, but with the lack of upgrade materials, my common weapons are just so much more powerful. I did use some Dragon Bow with magic damage on it for a long time before respeccing and giving up my Dex that was required to use it. That's been the only Boss weapon I've spent a lot of time with. It's slow firing for a bow, but really nice through the early/mid game, even unleveled. I'm roleplaying a primitive demigod. I roll with bone, wood and lightning as my main weapons. I wear rags as clothes and carry a Malformed Skull +10 a regular Club +9. Chuck lightning spears at anything at range. When I get summoned for co-op, I laugh at all these fancy lords, with their shiny armor and their metal weapons. Plus I never leveled up my carry weight, so I can't actually wear shit for armor and carry my skull and a shield.

The Dull Ember is actually in Nice, taking out the rats with half health is an achievement! If you didn't realize it, you HAVE to fight them solo. It's one of 2 areas in the game that I've found where the white soapstones are completely disabled.

Seems like that depends on what was offered. Better employment package, chance to work on deeper gameplay/mechanics, etc.

Surprisingly, not really. There have been a few fights I found easier solo. But there are plenty I tried solo, and then quickly went and got help (mostly the bosses with multiple enemies). The extra health/defense/damage that bosses get can make them challenging if you get a boneheaded companion or two. Though that seems to be getting less morons the higher level I get. I soloed the boss of the Shrine of Amana, as manipulating the movement by myself felt easier than what I had experienced as a co-op white spirit. But I took help in on the Undead Crypt, mostly because I didn't want to have to make the run from the bonfire to the fog door by myself again. Also, I assume that you found the Dull Ember and just needed to find the Blacksmith?

I don't know which way it goes, but I would be curious to see the count on how many times Batman gets referred by his name, or something like Bats or the Bat vs how many times Catwoman's name actually gets used. I bet there is a disparity there.

And for all my severe criticisms of BI, I actually really liked the melee combat in it, particularly once I had a bunch of melee focused gear and the vigor that lets you Charge people. Combine that with a shotgun and a hand cannon, and combat became really laughable. The hyperviolence of the melee kills never bothered me, really. Sure, they're gross and I can see what it would really turn someone off. Just didn't bug me. That Charge vigor just finally convinced me that if I wasn't going to be able to have prepared, thoughtful combat, I might as well have fun being a maniac pinballing back and forth across an arena.

Agreed, while the multiplayer was absolutely present in the previous iterations, some minor changes seem to have made it better in this one. Letting players be invaded while hollow means there's no reason not to turn human. The life protection rings let you stay human longer and conserve your effigies. I tend to go through each area solo, co-op the boss to get a preview, and then try to solo the boss in my world. If I fail a few times, then I'll bring in help. I entered the Company of Champions this evening though, revisited a few areas and then continued with my next area. It does make the game harder, but not brutally so. I kind of like it, the difficulty feels right for what I like in Souls. Things had been getting a touch on the easy side. Awestones are rarer than Titanite Slabs though. I've got 6 now, and 4 of those game from going offline to force some NPC phantoms to spawn.

The partner of a domtweet?

If you didn't know, that's a game that you can't change the difficulty midway through. I started it on Hard, because I had played a string of games that just felt too easy on normal, and wanted a challenge. Bad idea, I hit a brick wall about halfway through and couldn't drop down to normal. Thankfully it is the rare game that still has cheat codes to get some free nodes and credits. I don't think I would have been able to get through that one difficulty spike without them.

I'll just say that my perception of certain, particularly gendered, words changed radically raising a daughter. Most of them I used without a second thought before, even though I had women I respected in my life explain why the use of them was problematic. I was being stubborn and dense. But having witnessed those words used against my daughter solely because she is female, and the intent was to get under her skin with them, radically changed how I view and use them. Mostly this has come from her playing on Xbox Live. I've actually sat with her headphones on and listened to the shit that the vermin on there spit out. 99 percent of the time, she just has any strangers on mute, but occasionally we turned it on just to see how bad it is, and to have a conversation about sexism and misogyny in gaming. I also know that she's had people at school use those types of words towards her, and even more so has seen them used against other girls. I swear like a sailor, and I still fuckup now and again and use something like bitch absentmindedly, but not has much. And I'm much more cognizant of it. Those words have power, even when they are used in a non-gendered way. It's a kind of power that it's very difficult for a man to understand. I only have the window into that because of my daughter.

I really don't know how to respond to this, and I don't want to read the wrong things into it. I'm somewhat taking away from this that you think we are in a post-racist society, or would be if people would just stop talking about race. That racism (and actual racism, not some sort of pseudo-racism created by talking about race) doesn't still have a massive impact on a large number of people. I'm just absolutely flabbergasted by the claims you're making. I'm somewhat curious as to where you live as well, as both Native American Heritage Month and National Hispanic Heritage Month are both things that show up around me every year. I live in a place with a fair Hispanic population, and have a Native American university in town as well. Part of what you said simply isn't true, and parts of it seem to be making an argument that talking about race and racism is somehow causing you and others harm, so we all just need to be quiet about it.

Alternate Binding of Isaac and Spelunky levels, with Threes and Zuma minigames to get equipment/level up.

To be clear, no, I do not believe that any of the racism is intentional on the part of the developers. I do think it comes from a place of ignorance, of convenience, of cultural blindness, and the tendency of game devs to be a monoculture of white men. I also think that they were very married to the idea of having a series of parallels between Rapture and Columbia, resulting in Daisy being the counterpart to Fontaine, and they were going to hammer that square peg into a round hole no matter how poorly Daisy actually fit that role.

Falling deaths in PvP are endlessly hilarious, whether they happen to me or someone else. It looks like the Brotherhood of Blood is starting to warm up, I'm seeing a ton of red summon signs, and have seen a few more invaders. I think I came up with an amazing PvP build last night, but it's going to be completely unsuited to the end game, so I'll have to get through the last couple of areas before I can respect. I can't wait to try it though.

Chinese people are mentioned, but I don't remember there being anyone besides Chen. I also edited my post with some other thoughts and another spoiler from that Alec Meer piece.

Of course the game is set during the same time period that Ghandi was developing non-violent "revolution" that would set the stage for civil rights movements around the world. The game happens shortly before, but it is one of the culturally deaf elements of BI to force the hyper violence on a movement that in reality was dominated by non-violence. Of course there's no way that Daisy could ever learn about people like Ghandi or MLK Jr., it's not like there are magical portals all over the city that give knowledge about the events of the future. There has been a lot of quality writing exploring why the handling of Daisy and the Vox Populi is racist. If you haven't read any of it, you should. It's not about conforming to some having an opinion. Daisy could have ended up as a murdering shitbag at the end, and it could have been believable and non-racist. But that's not what happened. The game explicitly fucking says that the poor, black woman is JUST AS BAD as the enslaving, world conquering, possibly genocidal, kidnapping, torturing, dimension hopping psychopath running the city. And with the latest Burial at Sea, quite frankly the racism actually gets worse. Thanks for that. I haven't been reading RPS much lately, I probably would have missed it. Jeebus, I just read through that. He gives another spoiler bit about Elizabeth, and this is a bit fucking disgusting:

So I'm probably never going to play Burial at Sea, so I read some of the spoilers on it today. A few more characters return, and Daisy Fitzroy gets explored a bit more. The spoiler here details exactly what happens regarding more info about Daisy (nothing else). Info taken from this wiki. Ultimately this strikes me as them recognizing they fucked up with Daisy, and were trying to retcon something better. It...doesn't particularly impress me though, nor does it change any of the problems that whole arc has. It might actually make them worse. I really didn't think it was possible for me to be more disappointed in BI, or even angrier at the Daisy/Vox arc. I was wrong.

I just started listening, and the new song put the biggest smile on my face. Well done Mr. Remo.

Two cats and I just spent 15 minutes chasing a mouse through my house, AND WERE INCAPABLE OF ACTUALLY CATCHING THE LITTLE BASTARD. He disappeared into my master closet, which finally ended the chase, as there is no chance to find him in there. At one point I turned around, and the mouse was literally standing right next to my orange tabby's tail, and the cat had no clue. All we needed was the Benny Hill song playing in the background.

I was the same, didn't catch on until later, not until the Beach.

Idle Thumbs 151 makes me think of Bacardi 151. Oh college years. Edited to add: I had not started listening yet, and did not know there was almost immediately a Bacardi 151 joke.

That Animals suck at Jumping tumblr continues to make me happy.