JonCole

Not knowing exactly what you've had, I'd guess you just boil water and add a black tea bag and cinnamon stick. Let it steep for three or four minutes and pull it all out. You might also be well served by chai tea if you liked "cinnamon tea".

Yeah, play New Vegas over 3. However, if you suspect that you might end up playing both I'd play 3 first because as the others say NV is a definite iteration upon 3 and it'd feel weird to move backwards.

Congrats on the Etheric! Totally empathize with feeling precious about my first. I'd definitely use it on armor if you aren't level 34 yet, make sure you've got armor you'll be happy with for a while (the right specs, perks) before you ascend it. I stupidly decided to ascend some random merchant boots, when instead I should have saved it for a pair of Raid boots with the heavy weapon ammo perk. Once you hit level 34, your potential for earning more Light increases. Really sorry to hear about the POE 32 disconnect, I hear of that happening to people all the time. I wish that they would just implement a proper checkpoint system for it, maybe not the regular one for PvE/raids but one that could be similar to the Trials passage or something. Complete each round and the boss, turn in the POE passage to Variks for the reward.

The Trials map this week is really unforgiving, I'd have recommended you give it another try if it was one of the past couple weeks but this one is just prone to all kinds of map abuse. Have you been running Nightfall every week? I've seen a couple guys I've played with get an Etheric Light from it and it's considerably easier than POE or Trials.

Crucial sometimes runs refurbished 128GB SSDs for $30 on their website. However, it's such a hotly contested deal price that it generally sells out within an hour. Source - http://slickdeals.net/f/7859939-128gb-crucial-m4-2-5-sata-iii-mlc-solid-state-drive-recertified-29-free-shipping?v=1 http://slickdeals.net/f/7670564-crucial-m4-2-5-mlc-ssd-recertified-256gb-50-128gb-30-free-shipping?src=SiteSearch

I made $300 one summer flipping games, you take advantage of used game sales + trade-in promotions. For instance, Blockbuster (this is how long ago this was) would be running a B2G1 sale on used games. Gamestop would be running a trade 2, get $5 additional trade credit. I buy 6 $10 games for $40, then I trade them all to Gamestop for $6 TIV each. $6 * 6 + $3 * 5 = $51. There's also other stuff like catching games before their value adjusts, so there might be a game that inexplicably trades for $25 at a place because they never get it traded-in (and thus supply is low, so demand is high). Another place has it at a really low used price, because it's an unpopular game and never sells. People call it out on deal forums, then everyone grabs the cheap used game and trades it high before the retailers get word of it. Anyways, this is a lot harder now that there are less used games retailers out there plus there tend to be more centralized, company-wide trade-in values that are difficult to game.

Oh yeah, I totally missed it too. Ended up coming back around to it so I did get all the loot eventually, but I wish I had known which is the only reason I stressed it. Want to prevent others from making my silly mistakes.

The first path that Bjorn mentions is the ideal path, the latter is a workaround that's really not worth the blood echoes.

I'd rather not use a strategy that partly depends on the other team being stupid, I have an easy enough time handling those teams. I mean, "how to destroy tripmines" is "how to destroy anything" which is "shoot or blast it". The one tripmine strategy that I think could actually work (due to the tripmine actually lasting long enough) is sticking it to a ceiling or something that's easy to miss as you're chasing a guy. If he goes clockwise, throw a trip mine and go counterclockwise. If he's watching his radar, he'll double back and maybe walk right into your mine.

I think that the Telltale example is particularly strange. Telltale regularly heavily discounts the first episode of their running series, because it acts as a platform to download the other episodes as DLC and it effectively operates as a demo. Why someone would buy the first episode, return it, and then proceed to wait 4-5 months for the next sale to experience the rest is beyond my understanding. I feel like the far more likely scenario is that person avoids buying the game at full price for a couple months, buys the first episode at a discount when the second episode comes out, and then waits a couple more months for the season pass to be on sale. And yeah, I agree with Bjorn in that returns/refunds based on sale-pricing is common practice in retail. Amazon will sometimes refund you the difference in purchase price and sale price as long as a month after original purchase. Retailers often ban people due to abusive behavior, I know of a lot of people who flip games between retailers (buy used at one place, trade-in for more elsewhere) who have been banned from places like Gamestop because their unusual trades ding GS's database one too many times.

New production still -

My usual handle (jonac13) is just a construction of my first name (Jon), my initials and my age at the time I initially made it (I'm a tiny baby).

Xur is located near the big circular door at the Tower near the Speaker. He's selling the Helm of Saint-14, Young Ahamkara's Spine, Obsidian Mind, MIDA Multi-Tool, and Body Armor Engrams. All pretty good picks except for Young Ahamkara's Spine (it's alright for PvP, but so many better Hunter exotics to choose from). I went ahead and picked up the Helm of Saint-14 for my increasingly used Defender Titan build and I'm planning on picking up the MIDA. I rolled three Body Armor engrams, got the Titan Crest of Alpha Lupi, Hunter Crest of Alpha Lupi, and Starfire Protocol. Really excited about the latter, didn't yet have a Sunsinger-specific exotic so I'm eager to use it while I level SS. Also, sorry I didn't accept the invite last night spork/video games. I was away for a moment and by the time I tried to join you were already matchmaking. I was mostly on to finish running dailies on my Warlock, as I had spent a fair while in IB on my Titan earlier in the night. About halfway to level 4!

Alienware ran the old Alienware Alphas with similar tiers; storage, memory and processor were the only variables. Also, they all ran with GTX 860Ms. I'd guess that similarly, these will run GTX960M at 2GB VRAM. Also, RAM was replaceable in the Alpha so I'd expect the same here.

Amazon is selling the Mayflash Gamecube Controller adapter for Wii U for $12 via Lightning Deals (for only a couple hours). Pretty slick and I know a handful of thumbs recommend it.

Jack is so much cooler in the earlier episodes of the show.

I haven't used voice chat in a really long time but I started using it in Destiny and man... so many socially awkward people. Haven't run into many offensive people there, but the co-op-only nature of the chat in that game probably helps by a huge margin.

I was fully in the zeitgeist of that show while it was coming out, I swear that I listened to 3 or 4 concurrently running weekly podcasts discussing the show and its lore. I actually am hoping to view it now with a more critical eye. I'm thinking that I'll come out appreciating it more, there was a ton of backlash around the end of the series but I suspect that there is more connective tissue throughout the series to suggest the ending than is commonly believed. Also, so many of the characters were just so shitty in the end that I really would like to remember some of them being way cooler in earlier seasons.

Underpowered or overpowered is certainly a worthwhile thing to note, I noticed that too, but I imagine that it was so because of the general mechanics of the game. Namely, your weapons are way more powerful in the late game, your stats go up resulting in more critical hits/more raw damage values, plus there are a ton of perks that greatly benefit VATS specifically. At the same time, your opponents are leveled but they generally don't get stronger armor plus they frequently only have parts of a full outfit so they often have no damage resistance on their heads for instance. I feel that this is a problem with their combat system in a greater sense. In the late game of Skyrim it doesn't matter if an enemy is ridiculously armored, a ghost, a huge dragon, or what as long as I can snipe them with my bow and arrow from afar while they stagger slowly to try and meet me. If I level my stamina enough, I can continually stagger almost any monster with a good heavy sword or club and a barrage of heavy attacks. If I level my alchemy enough, I can create such potent poison that a single arrow can kill most human enemies. However, while my stats are low and I'm wearing Fur Armor, I get totally wrecked by mudcrabs. I really just hope they take steps to fix the combat system. Some of the best mods for Skyrim that I used completely overhauled the perk system and didn't just give you a stat advantage for certain perks, but gave the bonuses situationally. I really liked the changes to the light armor, where for instance you'd get a damage resistance buff if you were running directly towards a particular enemy. Or if you were fighting a more heavily armored opponent you'd get a speed buff. This would make it so the game actually adapts to your playstyle and rewards you for using it logically instead of giving these over-the-top stat boosts that make the game super easy in the late game. None of this is to say that there are no problems with VATS. I'd be really happy if in FO4 they'd remove all perks specific to VATS. Have it be a system that only overlaps the combat instead of replacing it. Take the mysterious stranger aspect out of VATS, make it so it just procs randomly in regular combat. And man, I totally forgot that iron sights were particular to New Vegas. I really hope they don't pass up putting that into FO4, made the shooting feel more like... shooting.

So, people don't like VATS because it devalues the combat? Or are you guys saying that VATS is indicative of the combat system being poor? I never really got the first criticism, considering it was completely voluntary. It would have been nice if they worked VATS into difficulty, so that in any difficulty above normal it was disable or maybe it was just a toggle. I can understand the latter a little better, I've never been terribly in love with the combat system of Bethesda's games but it's particularly not well suited to shooting. I don't know enough about their engine to make any informed criticisms of the shooting, but I do wish that there was some kind of auto-aim. All of that being said, VATS was essentially crucial to my wife's enjoyment of the game. She isn't much for first person shooters and whenever she can reduce the need to use those mechanics, the better. I can only really get her into RPG-FPS style games, of which there are few, and most that are straight-up shooting like Borderlands wear on her patience. FO3 and NV were perfect for this, because she could almost always use VATS and get through it with the difficulty on easy. She also played DXHR and did a full non-lethal stealth run, minus a couple places where she slipped up (understandably). So basically, I want VATS in FO4. I never used it all that much, but it was nice in a pinch and made the game accessible to people who weren't so much for shooters.

I've started to rewatch Lost. The pilot episodes are still some of the best TV I've ever seen, really eager to watch the whole series with what I know now.

I had no idea, I've been following JoeKllr for months now. You're in dense company, Apple Cider.

I'm kind of wondering if the pre-war stuff will actually be included in a weird preservationist way. I think that some of the context for why much of Boston was spared from the total destruction of other cities is (mild FO3 spoilers)

270 is the maximum number of points in any given category (giving you 100%). Any points over that don't count, so it's not worth exceeding that number by much. Split stats give you slightly more points than if all the points go into one, so taking two items that have Int/Dis split would likely be better than one item with Int only and one with Dis only, granted everything is fully upgraded and ascended. You can basically max out two stats completely, or max out one and split the remaining two.

My Summoner (Adept) was doing ~2100 Crits with a 27 round magazine, which was just totally insane. Actually eager to run it again a second time with my Warlock. Eternal Warrior just seems a bit... blah. I don't really know what their logic was in the creation of that. Though I've had such bad luck with Exotic rolls that I'd take it over my Helm of Inmost Light, as I much prefer Int/Dis over pure Str plus perks that favor Super use over melee. I'm so tired of all this pure STR garbage left and right.