Bjorn

Bracket is out. I'm pretty happy with KU's seed and region, given how rough the end of our season was and Embiid still out with injury. I do feel like K-State and Wichita both got hosed. Same region and will face each other in round 2 if both win. Plus 2 of the other Final Four teams from last year are in that region, and Duke as well. Games start on Thursday! (Not counting the whatever first round games)

What's funny is at this point I have a ton of Titanite Chunks from invasion rewards (something like 26 chunks right now) but no Large Shards. I found the I'm dying to get some more Twinkling Titanite though, I really want to use the Craftsman's Hammer as my main weapon. Something about the idea of running around with a blacksmith's hammer is really appealing to me. Oh, I also respecced last night since I found a second Soul Vessel. It's pretty straightforward. Talk to the old lady from the beginning, and there is a dialogue option to respec. You get a screen where all your points have been given back, and you have to re-assign them before leaving, so you can't use it to de-level. I also learned that if there is an NPC with a stat requirement to talk to, you can still interact with them even if you respec to a lower stat. There are at least two NPCs who require a certain intel to talk to. One of them I raised mine to talk with, but when I respecced, I dropped below the threshold (back down to a 1). But when I went back to him, he was still willing to talk to me and sell me stuff. Respeccing was also useful to see how the progression works across the different stats, since I had 60ish levels to hand out. Health and Stamina are both steadily decreasing benefits over a couple of tiers. Strength and Dex seem to give steadily increasing benefit until they hit 40, at which point they plummet. That all seems pretty similar to DS1. I'm almost always boring with my names. I use one of a few names of old D&D characters that I played. My current build is named Domain, after an amazon warrior I played in one campaign, since I made a female Bandit to start with. Oh, has anyone used the casket in the tutorial area that the two Trolls are guarding? I have, took me a minute to realize what it does.

A three month notice is crazy long. Congrats on all the positive movements!

Cara Ellison over at RPS is starting up a regular column exploring sex in video games. Seemed like a great opportunity to start a thread here. The first game she's tackling is Ute, which is pretty fascinating both thematically and mechanically. This is interesting to me on a few levels. As my daughter reached college age, I discovered a rather amazing secret conversation that happens within some families. The older women are concerned about her sex life (including aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers). They want her to have one. They wanted her to have more of a chance to learn and have fun than they did. I say secret, because this is sooo counter to what young women are usually taught. And secret because almost all of these conversations happened between my wife and the other female relatives. They felt uncomfortable directly telling our daughter that it was okay to be promiscuous, so long as you were as safe as possible. My wife had similar conversations with other parents, who secretly want their kids to have fulfilling sex lives, but don't know how or want to communicate that. They feel an obligation to tow the standard midwest American line that sex is bad, dangerous and should be reserved for marriage, even though they don't believe it. Mechanically, the flip in agency regarding initiation of sex is interesting as it mirrors real life (women really are the ones in charge of when sex happens), but it's often the opposite in popular media, unless a woman's reticence is being used for comedic affect. Fascinating stuff.

There's a new S.EXE column over at RPS. Idle Thumbs fans will be happy to know that in it Cara Ellison has replaced pictures of dongs with Jeff Goldblum:

I liked that fight a lot as well! It was like, oh, hey, that wasn't too bad, ohcrapohcrapohcrap. I thought that fight used more of a fireball type thing. I only saw them cast it a few times, and was running around a ton in the fight anyways. The graphic of this player spell is that a small fire appears mid-air right behind or on the target, and then explodes after the short delay. It's called...Flame Swathe or something like that. I don't remember where I picked it up. It only gets 2 casts, so it might have 4 with a very high attunement. You won't have to dodge very many of them.

Wizard. Distinguish. Lord. Exuberant.

I cheesed him in my first game with long range bow shots for the same reason. Second time around I actually meleed him proper like. Dodging the level drain attack is actually not too bad once you recognize all his tells.

I don't think that's updated since like the first day. If you examine the monument that the depressed guy is leaning against, it shows total deaths. Last night when I looked, it was at 42 MILLION deaths Oh, and I did finally start seeing red invaders last night. Saw two, and lost to both of them. One of them I should have had, but I was messing around with different weapons after upgrading my Dex to a new threshold, and when I saw the invasion sign, just figured I'd roll with what I had. Bad idea. I had the Old Knight Halberd on, which I did not realize has the durability of a paper towel! I had the guy down to just one more hit, and the halberd broke, dropping it's damage down to like 10 points of damage per hit. Oh, and I was also in an area that I had cleared all the bosses. I had heard you could still be invaded even if the area boss was dead. Guess that's true. The second guy used what's probably going to be a super popular, as it's a one hit kill spell for a lot of players. If you see someone using Pyromancy, be ready to dodge a fair distance. There's a spell that creates a large, slightly delayed explosion. The explosion centers on where the target was when the spell was cast. You've got about 2ish seconds to get out of range. I got one shot buy it. I had the spell, and decided to try it out and took it to And I was able to one shot kill one player and take another down to just the tiniest sliver of health. I'll go back to beating down other players with the holy duo of god's lighting and wooden club now. My best duel of the night was with a guy with a large club and me with just the little starting club (at +9). It was funny to see him with his giant club and me with my tiny club thwacking at each other.

The loot was totally worth it, something fairly rare and useful I had seen quite a few comments, including in some reviews, about how the bosses weren't as memorable or inspired in this one. I have to say I disagree. Several of the ones I've faced have felt like they lived up to the previous Souls games. I got to the: And that was an absolute treat. I frustrating toxic treat the first half dozen times, but a treat nonetheless.

Ha! Great stuff. If Male Superhero Costumes were Designed Like Female Superhero Costumes!

I was there during my sophomore year the first time around in college, much like you're describing. There isn't a "right" answer for where you are. I ended up dropping out part way through Fall semester to avoid failing multiple classes. I was already on academic probation, and failing more classes likely would have resulted in me being kicked out anyways. I took a few years off, had some jobs, got some partying out of my system. And about 5 years later I went back. The second time around I was calmer, more focused and more productive. I made a lot of friends in my department, as I was more invested and active in the community of that department. I didn't end up getting my bachelor's degree until right after I turned 30. For me (and I stress this is so individual), leaving school for a few years was one of the best decisions I ever made. But I know other people who powered through a period like this and made it. I will say that dropping out caused me to take a major hit to my self-esteem for a few years though. My feelings of being a failure were magnified 10 fold. I had never failed that bad at anything in my life prior to that point. For a couple of years, I didn't think I would ever got back to school, that I would just do blue collar work and live in shitty apartments forever. So my depression actually got much worse before I started improving. I ultimately took a couple of night classes at a community college, which was a fabulous ego boost. Not putting down people who go that route, but it reminded me that I actually am a pretty fucking smart dude and considerably more skilled than a lot of people who do make it through college. If you're feeling like you're actually clinically depressed, I'd also strongly suggest seeking help. It's such a bullshit stigma in American culture, but the reality is that most of us go through times where professional counseling and the proper application of meds can help us.

Just installed my first CPU water cooler on my gaming rig. Been having some concerns about heat with it ever since I built it. I just used the stock heatsink and fan, as I never worry about overclocking. It's been borderline running hot in some games, but not enough to make me freak out. Just finally decided to bite the bullet and get an aftermarket cooler though. Got a Corsair H60. Gotta say I'm pretty happy with it from testing everything out this afternoon. Idle temps are running 14+ degrees C cooler, and load temps are now about what my idle temps used to be. It was surprisingly easy to install, much easier than some of the aftermarket big heatsink air coolers. That's the biggest reason I went with the H60 over an air cooled system. Something like an 212 Evo was going to require that I remove my motherboard to mount the heatsink. The lighterweight water system could just use the existing AMD mounts.

Of course they gave it cheevos and cards. I'm a bit surprised that it's launching with them, to be honest. If it was my movie, I'd want the data about viewership without it being tainted by people just downloading it and turning it on to get the free cards.

Now I've got pinball wizard stuck in my head.

I'd say it creates a different penalty, a fixed cost of 3,000 souls and the time sink of having to run back to Majula to get it repaired. It's certainly not a trivial cost long term. I've probably spent 40,000+ souls repairing it since I started doing this. That's a chunk of souls I could have saved if I was just willing to spend all the souls I have on me and run around like I normally do. Edited to add: There's an additional cost of having to keep that ring on you. Giving up a ring slot can represent a pretty significant cost, and later on I can see me preferring to give up this ring in favor of greater offense, defense or utility. Oh, a bunch of my deaths came in Huntsman's Copse, at one particular jump. It's the most ridiculous jump I've seen. If you want my advice on how to handle it:

Nice, congrats! That's the one major boss I got through as well. The path to get to that boss was hair raising. I'm loving running around with the ring that lets you keep your souls/humanity. It costs 3,000 to repair, but that can be made up multiple times over just co-op a single boss. I ran around all night with 100,000+ souls on me, as I'm pretty happy with my level and don't want to move out of co-op range for the areas I'm in. That ring lets me do that safely. If I have one serious complaint about their design decisions, it's the scarcity of upgrade resources in the early to mid game. I've beat...8 bosses, I think. And I still feel like I don't have enough basic Titanite Shards to experiment. I started unlocking some Boss Soul weapons, but their upgrade material is so rare I've only seen one. I don't want to be running around with all +10 stuff at this point, but it would be nice to be able to upgrade multiple things to +5 or so in order to experiment and play around with different toys. The ridiculous thing is that I have a bunch of Titanite Chunks because they are a reward from one Covenant, and it's easy to get them. But Shards and Large shards are worth their weight in gold. Speaking of that Covenant that rewards Chunks:

Bonus points if you wear a trenchcoat and fedora when you point out the brilliance of Objective Video Game Reviews. What I would actually like to do is question them about why there is so little good games criticism in the mainstream gaming sites. It seems like having a panel on objective reviews is a good way to not talk about the ways that their sites actually do fail their audiences.

The DLC is all pretty fantastic, it became some of my favorite areas of the game after I went through it. And those bosses, wow.

What a weird design decision. The big weapons already have two drawbacks (weight and swing speed), I can't fathom why they would think that changing how targeting works was necessary. Well, wait, maybe I can. It could actually be used to lead fast targets if you were a real master of using them, which could come in crazy handy in PvP. It would allow you to compensate for the slow swing speed. But I'm not sure that mechanically would actually work that well, and I'd rather have the option to just swing like every other weapon.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be too similar to who I was in high school or college, but on the same hand, I don't really regret much about those periods in my life either. Luckily no one was ever hurt (maybe some adults were irritated or disappointed) and some funny stories came out of it. Teenagers are also, biologically, selfish and self-centered, which is where a lot of that behavior comes from. There's a reason we don't just become older versions of those kids, our brains literally grow out of that stage. That research also helped me as a parent when I'd observe the behavior of our kid and her friends, and know that there was ultimately a reason behind it and that they'd outgrow it eventually.

That's fascinating and weird. Why would they not want co-op to restore humanity, that's always been one of the perks of co-op. It also explains the inconsistency that I had with becoming human from co-oping. Out of a few co-op matches tonight, I had 3 in a row where I didn't turn human, then one where I did (and that one wasn't successful, I got disconnected from the host before we finished). I did see a tip in that Reddit thread about staying human though. Broken rings are now repairable, instead of just gone for good. The equivalent of the Ring of Sacrifice retains your physical state when you die (human or whatever health loss you were at). So as long as you're willing to dedicate a ring slot to that ring, you can survive a bunch of deaths in a row in human form from a single effigy. I haven't spotted a straight sword like that yet. I did play around with the large club tonight though, and there is something weird about its swing. With the vertical overhand swing, you can completely whiff and miss a locked on enemy. It seems to swing whatever direction you are moving, even if you have a lock on. So if I'm strafing right around an enemy and swing, I actually turn right and just pound the ground. If I make sure I stop moving, I swing like you would expect. I don't have any other large weapons with that same type of swing yet, so I don't know if it's unique to the club, or if it's something about that overhead animation. I have to think this is a glitch, and not intended. I also had my first PvP experience tonight! Found an area similar in idea to the forest covenant in DS1, where players are defending the area against trespassers. I got invaded twice. First guy ended up in a situation where in order for either of us to get to one another, it was going to give the opponent multiple free ranged shots. He had 4 enemy units on his side, so no way I was going there, it would have been instant slaughter. He ultimately chose to disconnect rather than risk taking damage to get to me. Coward. The second invader killed me dead. Like not even a real fight. I still haven't seen a regular invasion, though I did spot a red invasion summon sign. But when I tried to use it, it failed. I also joined the Blue Sentinels with the hope of helping defend people against invaders, but after a few hours of wearing their ring, I never got summoned.

This is such a good episode. "You somehow Mr. Magoo'd your way through a minefield." That is exactly how I reflect back on my teen years. We were so dumb, such assholes and so lucky. There were a lot of pranks, and a fair amount of vandalism, but the worst were the cars. Most of us were farmers' kids, so we had been working and getting paid since we were like 10 years old. Which meant that my brother and I were both able to buy ourselves older muscle cars when we were like 15 years old. This was a terrible idea! But my dad liked fast cars, so I think he lived vicariously through our cars when we were teens. But gawd, what the fuck were our parents thinking? Sure it was our money, but c'mon! My brother had a '69 Barracuda and I had '70 Firebird. One of my buddies had a '69 AMX. It's a miracle that none of us killed ourselves or someone else with those steel sleds of death. My daughter is a sophomore in college now, and the couple of guys she dated in high school were so much like me and my old friends it was spooky. Part of me, as the mature father, wanted to hate these little shitheads. But then I would remember how fucking terrible I was, and couldn't bring myself to really judge these guys that much. If anything, they were probably a lot better kids than we were.

I had missed this reply. I do not require success to get something of value from a game. I'll have to put it on my wishlist and wait for a sale.

So I went to the doctor for a sinus infection yesterday, and the male nurse who was doing all my checks (weight, temp, etc) and I were just casually chatting, and video games came up. I mentioned Dark Souls 2 coming out this week, and he got all excited and asked if I played this game called DayZ, because it's hardcore like Dark Souls. He told me that DayZ is how he relaxes in the evenings. Working in a medical field can be stressful and exhausting, and he likes DayZ because he just assumes he's going to get killed. It's not stressful, since death is a given, so every evening is just the chance for a new journey. It was the weirdest conversation to have at my doctor's office.