tomkatt

Weird, wife and I have played it co-op the entire time. There’s occasional desyncs (saving and reloading fixes that) and otherwise all good.

You need to install the unfinished business mod to really make Solasta shine. It’s… unofficially endorsed by the devs (in the sense that the UB mod discord channel is hosted on the official Solasta discord). It adds races, subclasses, and more to bring the game fully in-line with tabletop options, including multi-classing.

Besides that, while the official campaign is decent enough, some custom campaigns are incredible, like full games in and of themselves, and some take more advantage of the game engine and dialogue options than the official campaign.

To me, Baldur’s Gate 3 is an interesting experiment, but in terms of gameplay it’s just not D&D. It’s a weird relationship sim with some (very) loose D&D mechanics. It has fun moments but the game is inconsistent, buggy, and generally becomes very un-fun, especially in multiplayer.

BG3 is very much a Larian game with D&D trappings, not a D&D game just made by Larian, if that makes sense.

I put something like 50-60 hours into BG3 and just couldn’t be bothered to finish it, stalled out once in act 2, and again on a second attempt in act 1. By contrast, I’ve got over 500 hours and counting in Solasta.

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Edit - oh, and with regard to rations, stack up early as you can (at least 20) and from there you’ll gather plenty in the field map if you have someone with high survival. Alternate option would be to have a Ranger or dries with goodberry, and later on other classes get the create food spell.

Or you could just disable the food mechanic altogether, it’s your game.

Yeah, don’t accept trash from strangers.

I have full faith in Tactical Adventures. Solasta is the closest translation of tabletop D&D to CRPG ever made IMO. All they need is a better than indie budget and permissions to use the full license and content instead of just the SRD.

I had really specific requirements on the car in terms of capability and price since I was moving to a rural area and my old car was a 14 year old Hyundai Accent with bad suspension. Didn't want a truck or anything too large, but needed a car that could handle some off-road and country roads, and had around 7" or better clearance, and couldn't have a dual clutch transmission (either traditional or CVT with no dual only). Basically it came down to the Honda CRV, Kia Sportage, and Toyota RAV4.

CRV was my first choice, but its front bumper rides low, reducing it's clearance below the frame height, it can't even get over low objects. RAV4 was ideal, but like... $8k more expensive than the sportage, at the time the sportage was just under $24k new (crazy, since I was seeing used ones with up to 45k miles going for $27-28k).

So, I was sold on the Kia and just considered it kind of around my hourly rate. Even if it took all day, I was saving minimal $8k compared to my next best alternative and my hourly rate at the time for work was like $42. Even if the prices were the same, just factoring the 0% finance deal when my best pre-approved loan rate was 2.5% would save me well over $1k on the life of the loan, and around $400 in just the first year, so I figured it was totally worth a few hours of haggling and stalling on them.

When I moved I bought some nice all-terrain tires (Nitto Nomad Grapplers) for a few hundred bucks and it's been solid. No complaints, decent performance, and I don't get stuck in the mud at all. :)

I mean, I was already preapproved for a 2.5% loan and qualified for the 0% offer, made that clear. I was very up front there would be no dealer loan.

I made it dirt easy, like “I’m qualified for this zero interest deal, I’m willing to pay up to $10k in cash up front. Make it happen for $300 a month or less with those terms and you have a sale.”

They still fucked around so hard. I really was ready to walk out empty handed, they made the deal literally with me unlocking my old car to leave.

I just use goodreads and my “finished” collection on my eReaders.

You’d be surprised, it depends entirely on where you’re willing to live.

I used to live in the Denver Metro Area in Colorado and houses were going for like $400k-650k in the area.

Ended up moving to a smaller town ex-urban/rural area since my work is remote anyway. Had my home built in 2021. 1050 sq/ft 2 bed 2 bath for $210k. And even better, I snuck in before rates climbed. With $6k in points at closing, I got it at 2.25%.

Even after doing a full solar and battery installation and insuring the place for an additional $50k to accommodate that and value increase, my mortgage (including insurance and tax escrow) only comes to $1215 a month. I’ve been paying extra on principle every month to reduce interest amortization, and hope to pay it off within the next decade most likely. Retirement won’t be easy, but actually seems like a possibility now.

And bonus, I’m near a ton of nature, get to enjoy deer chilling outside the house, and the night sky out here is beautiful.

The Vagrant. Fast paced fantasy pseudo post-apocalypse involving a mute knight protagonist and a baby. Fascinating book, very enjoyable.

I’d also recommend the Licanius Trilogy, it’s utterly brilliant.

Might want to hold off with Licanius until you’re in a better place mentally though. It’s well paced but has a lot of characters and a ton of interweaving connected plot points that involve both magic and time travel.

Nah, I bought it because there wasn’t going to be a better deal, I did my research for weeks and months prior and that 0% popped up in the middle of reviewing options.

I think they tried the push because it was the last day I could get it before the deal expired. The zero % financing was via the manufacturer, not dealership.

0% was a brand-wide deal (manufacturer, not dealership) to get rid of previous year stock, there was no cash back option on it. Plus, there’s no lower rate than zero, and best I could get with a different loan was 2.5%. Though I did reference said pre-qualification during negotiation when they made the crap offers. Made it clear I wasn’t walking out with a dealer loan.

This article pisses me off. Back in late 2020 I went to a dealership to buy a new car, very high credit score, 1/3 cash down, and qualified for a 0% interest deal that was going on at the time.

The dealership came at me with the most bullshit offers, tried to get me to take dealership financing at 4%, then 3.5, then 3% at a longer loan duration and acted like they were doing me a favor the whole time. Finance guy was being such a dickhead about it even the sales guy started getting pissed at him.

Took nearly 6 freaking hours to close the deal. Finally got my 0% offer and expected financing/cost because it was 20 minutes to closing time and I was like “fuck it, I’ll go check out your competitors tomorrow,” keys in hand, walking out the door. Sales guy literally chased after me and stopped me at the car to say the finance dude finally caved.

Fucking scumbag stuff. Dealership changed their name a year later and I don’t wonder why.