Drugs are great, you take them too most like (caffeine, ethanol, theanine etc). It’s the power that fucked that shit head up.

Loads of people take ketamine and just like appreciate jazz or some other banal shit.

Smoking: easy way to quit smoking plus weed during the worst withdrawal to avoid snapping at everyone

Weed (earlier lmao, I still use sometimes but less than a gram a year really): having other things to do that require concentration and memory I enjoy. Weed is easy as it’s mostly habitual. The sleeplessness is the worst and it’s only a couple of days

Opiates: Exercise, avoiding boredom (v hard! video games, gardening, easy books, podcasts etc), lots of walking those restless nights, preparing easy food for the worst few days, counting days to know it was going to end. Be careful after surgery kids that shit sucks to come off.

There is when sprinting. although it’s shared with interact but that only really comes up when sprinting to ladders

no I didn’t. I think this about on par with ds1

I actually love ds1 in its entirity. well until the Lord vessel then the game falls apart. I’m not one for fast paced games (arthritis) and really enjoy the exploration and navigation. Sometimes I just load up a save and run around for a bit to relax :p

I’m not sure my opinion is the one to listen to in your case, given it seems you prefer the later faster gameplay with more emphasis on bosses?

All I can really say is I haven’t enjoyed a souls game much since demons souls and dark souls (although sekiro was quite fun it’s very different) until now. I’m only about 10 hours in on my third area.

I do think many people’s complaints (but not all! there are some very idiosyncratic choices) are from not paying attention. Like recognising when you can pull out the lantern to do something, when you need to fully cross into death, making full use of all the tools (e.g. regenerating ranged ammunition, the map they give you, kicks, mid combo 1h 2h swapping, powerstancing), understanding how the level designers have set traps.

If you try play it like lies of P and just sprint in parrying everything you have a bad time and get swarmed. you also need to engage in the RPG parts more, swapping rings and armour for the current challenge and so on.

I thought lies of p was an absurdly tedious game tbh with the bosses requiring lots of memorisation. I think a lot of this is subjective.

You can place temporary bonfires pretty close to bosses using a consumable you can buy or loot from certain enemies. Some people seem to be running out of them, I have more than I need and I feel like I’m using them liberally.

It’s a very similar game to ds1. It’s that sort of slower, easier game where you spend most of your time methodically exploring a large interconnected world. Once you know what you’re doing you can run through a lot.

If you thought ds1 was a bad game you probably won’t like this. If you thought it was fantastic you probably will.

One thing I haven’t figured out is if perfect parry wither damage is variable.

Sometimes it feels like I take a lot of wither, othertimes not. I’m using a shield and 2hing a lot so I wonder if it’s a shield vs weapon parry thing? Or if it’s timing based like partial parry damage mitigation in ds3.

I was too engrossed to do testing so far, have you tried at all?

What weapons are you using btw? my wife uses a giant axe and seems to yeet herself a lot. Are the certain weapons with lots of lungy movements that might be tripping people up?

Look I’m in love but it’s a very polarising game. If you enjoyed playing ds1 blind, and saw something to love in ds2 underneath the weirdness then I’d recommend it but it is not the fast and nippy ds3 onwards style. Levels are confusing if you don’t figure out what the map is telling you, umbral exploration is fascinating but tense and you have to rush sections which can make you miss what you picked up.

There’s a few baffling decisions like auto filling your quick bar with new consumables when empty, not marking new items in inventory, lore being state gated (it miiight be some arty you get the story from various perspectives thing but I’m unconvinced yet), and many people find the ranged pressure unpleasant. You’re often being shot at till you clear an area.

Just don’t do what I did. You start with some basic mix right? good old 20/80/trace and you’re happy. But you wonder, who doesn’t wonder, so you try some different stuff right? I mean it’s there, can’t hurt to know cannit?

Maybe you try a little high/low humidity. you think hehe this feels a bit funny. Then it’s just a small step to puffing clouds at high altitude right? next think you know you’re chasing that forever. It’s strange and weird but then breathing down on the ground feels so exhilarating. Nothing can stop the road you’re on now.

You’ll be trying diving mixes, pure oxxy, vox mods with helium and shit. You’re sleeping among empty gas tanks. It’s no life man, no life at all.

Make better choices, it’s too late for me.

Thanks, that’s a lot to think about. We currently use an oled computer monitor as a TV (hooked up to a pi) and it’s beautiful but there are limits on screen size and it’s crazy expensive (you’re paying for stupid fast refresh rates and the Gamer™ markup)

our house is very bright during the day, lots of glass in sunny Australia, so it’s probably not a great candidate for a projector generally but it does have me thinking about one in the bedroom for late night movies. Probably a lot cheaper and neater than another absurd monitor.

How dark do rooms need to be for them to work? Are there issues with shared spaces where someone might want a well lit workspace?

I was like 12 but it was funny as shit. I think now a lot of the humour might fall flat now the zeitgeist has moved on but that storming of the beach against the teddybears still cracks me up remembering it.

Lucky for me my kink is explaining awkward situations to professionals obligated to help you out >:D

Kinda! I am a bit overloaded atm. Never finished elden ring due to an arthritis flare, absorbed with persona 5 atm, haven’t played disco Elysium yet either.

Trying to find more time for non gaming hobbies and even so a new update for oxygen not included just game out!

There’s been a glut of excellent games lately. Even stuff like Dave the diver is pretty absorbing. I’m keen to give it a go eventually though! after mechwarrior 5 proved too sloggy I’ve been a bit starved of mech games, so much so I’ll settle for weeb samuri suit shit ;p (I kid I kid it’s very silly aesthetically but we all squeeled with glee at the Pacific rim rocket punch)

I’m glad it’s not multiplayer so I can enjoy it at my leisure.

The definition privileges action, which is why vegan philosophy is generally fine with stuff like foxes hunting birds but not humans hunting foxes to save birds.

Taking action to depress ants to save others would go against the ethos as defined:

“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”

definitionally you aren’t vegan if environmental impact is your terminal goal. It would be like saying you’re Christian for the cathedrals or something.

Veganism is a philosophy and life practice of trying to minimise harm to other earthlings. It can involve environmentalism as an instrumental goal, that is protecting the environment to avoid mass suffering, but a world of perfect environmental preservation where all ants have depression would be unacceptable to a vegan but not to an environmentalist.

Many people with environmental goals adopt a plant based diet and/or lifestyle.

Some freaks have a mutation while allows us to unlock a secret additional flavour that you regs just can’t taste. That’s what the post references.

Unfortunately that flavour is pretty much analogous to hand soap.

So it tastes nice, and also like soap. Generally soap is considered a food ruining condiment.

Also ruined are things like Thai Basil. Seriously I would cut off my left pinky to not have this wretched sense.

I admit to being out of the game for a while but how common is RAM encryption?

wouldn’t the overhead violate half the point of RAM?

Sure of course of course but umm have you seen software?

There are still windows xp computers on the internet.

It’s not insurmountable, and of course I have no idea if/how this will roll out.

Just it seems to mess with a rather deep assumption we have about how computers operate when we develop software and threat models.

Maybe, it depends how it works.

Memory is often unencrypted and/or contains encryption keys. Many programs rely on the assumption that it’s cleared on powerdown for security.

Depending on how this memory enters the long term state it seems that a lot of legacy software might become vulnerable to a really simple attack.

Pulling the plug might no longer be something that forces someone to engage in rubber hose analysis.