I've noticed that the greater majority of players are running the exact same combination of Noctowl, Vigaroth, and what seems like a wildcard choice of any of Obstagoon, Swampert, Lanturn, or Stunfisk (either version). This basically results in a team that rock-paper-scissor's itself when confronted with the inevitable mirror matches, which I GUESS is a feasible strategy, and is probably the result of someone's galaxy brain tier list somewhere.
At this point, I've given up on running a "fun" team, and have just dedicated my existence to making an anti-meta team that's intentionally built around having each 'mon being able to hard-counter 2 of the ones above. While I'm not going to say what I'm running or how it may fare against a team of random stuff (which does appear about...idk...1-in-4 matches?), I'm consistently getting an average of 4 wins per set simply because it demolishes the above team every time it comes up.
My advice for anyone else that's fed up with seeing Noctowl and Vigaroth over and over again is, rather than playing the exact same team because "it's the best one statistically" or whatever, just assume everyone's going to play that team and find something specifically suited to countering it. It will turn the frustration of losing to or mirroring with cookie-cutters into at least mild satisfaction and make PVP a little more enjoyable
...or at least for a couple of weeks until Giratina and Trevenant come back.

Most of my builds are theme builds that match a captain to a ship matching their species. Today's entry is a Lethean captain who utilizes their dangerous psychic abilities to cripple enemy ships while they fight. Most of the decisions I made on this build were based on representing that in the game, and are, in many cases, very, very not meta. This build will not win any DPS races, so if that is what you are looking for, do yourself a favor and find a different build. Like usual for me, I don't typically inflict my theme builds on other parties or elite content, so they are rarely parsed, but I don't post them until I am largely satisfied with how well they get through content. This one is no exception to that rule, though that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement, there usually is, even within my theme.
The idea of making a psychic combat ship is taken from the fact that that is how they fight on the ground in the show, at least the one episode I recall them from. I felt that they would want to capitalize on their own strengths in space as well, and this build is designed to represent that. While their psychic abilities on the ground are lethal, this build is focused on placate and confuse mechanics for the most part, since there aren't many actually called out psychic powers for ship combat.
The idea is to hit them with a placate, then give them another target to go after, and then confuse them, so they end up targeting other things, letting you attack with impunity.
The placates the ship uses are Strike From the Shadows, Slippery Target, Failsafe Scrambler, An Explosive Expert doff. Other placate sources were considered, but discarded due to lack of adequate triggers, or wanting to use the slots they would take for other things. The primary method of confusion is Attack Pattern Lambda III, which along with things like eject warp plasma can also mess with their perception, for what little that is worth.
Since I am relying on an attack pattern to deliver confusion, and can deliver placates the same way via Strike From the Shadows, I want my weapons to hit as many targets as possible as fast as possible, so I rely on beams which strike instantly and FAW, Torpedo Spread, and Entwined Tactical Matrices to deliver those effects.
Now, placate and confuse effects also enable a few other things, Abundance of Caution giving me sizable DRR against confused enemies, Strike from the shadows crit bonuses, and Concealed Repairs healing effects.
There are also a number of build elements that encourage me to get close and stay close, for example the debilitating effects of the Bajoran Defense set (which I an counting as debilitating psychic effects in my own mental fantasy of the character. Pretty much any debuff to the enemy on this build can be added to that list as well), Slippery Target's additional sizable DRR bonus, and Painful memories.
Painful memories is one of the few ship based things the game actually calls out as being psychic (via it's flavor text: "Cause a psionic energy resonance with the EPS of enemy ships"), so I felt somewhat compelled to include it, even though it isn't very efficient. It's inclusion on the build compelled me to include the only 2 engineering abilities that are both foe-affecting, and AOE: Eject Warp Plasma and Unstable Warp Field... and ironically they both have a shared 15 second cooldown, so you won't see me using them at the same time... but I largely don't need to.
I paired Eject Warp Plasma up with Coolant Ignition, which does not share a cooldown with each other, but do behave similarly in their deployment. I typically use them with the active rep trait Tethered Non-Baryonic Asteroid, which lets me pull groups of ships behind me in the clouds as they deploy. My ship's turn rate is high enough that I can even be broadsiding them with my beam arrays as I do this.
I paired Unstable Warp Bubble up with Deploy Countermeasures, together handling any small battlefield objects out there, and helping keep me pretty safe. The deploy countermeasures has the additional affect of providing more targets fro enemies to hit other than me when I confuse them.
Speaking of those additional targets, photonic fleet and aceton assimilator both also serve this purpose. However of the three, ideally enemies target the assimilator. Any drain effect it might have is really incidental. It's really there for my confuse effects to get as many enemies hitting it with energy weapons as possible. I have wracked up a surprising amount of damage doing that, even in solo play.

Captain Details

Captain Name	Usgan
Captain Career	Science
Captain Faction	Klingon
Captain Race	Lethean

Space Skill Tree

Rank	Engineering		Science		Tactical
Lieutenant	Improved Hull Restoration	Improved Hull Capacity	Shield Restoration	Improved Shield Capacity	Advanced Energy Weapon Training	Advanced Projectile Weapon Training
Lt. Commander	Improved Electro-Plasma System Flow	Advanced Impulse Expertise	Improved Control Expertise	Improved Drain Expertise	Advanced Targeting Expertise
	Full Impulse Energy Shunt		Control Amplification	Drain Infection
Commander					Advanced Weapon Amplification	Advanced Weapon Specialization
Captain			Advanced Exotic Particle Generator	Advanced Long Range Targeting Sensors	Advanced Hull Penetration
Admiral					Coordination Protocols
					Defensive Coordination
					Offensive Coordination
0 Points Left	10		15		21

Space Skill Unlocks

Purchases	Engineering	Science	Tactical
2	Hazard Emitters III	Science Team III	Tachyon Beam III
5	Battery Expertise	Sector Space Travel Speed	Threat Control
7	Feedback Pulse III	Photonic Shockwave III	Jam Sensors III
10	Maximum Hull Capacity	Maximum Shield Capacity	Projectile Critical Chance
12		Gravity Well III	Tractor Beam III
15		Control Resistance	Energy Critical Chance
17			Viral Matrix III
20			Accuracy

Ship Loadout: Lethean Nemosin Pilot Escort

Slot	Item
Fore Weapon 1	Nausicaan Energy Torpedo Launcher
Fore Weapon 2	Nausicaan Disruptor Beam Array
Fore Weapon 3	Terran Task Force Disruptor Beam Array
Fore Weapon 4	Experimental Romulan Disruptor Beam Array
Fore Weapon 5	Disruptor Wide Angle Dual Heavy Beam Bank
Aft Weapon 1	House Martok Omni-Directional Disruptor Beam Array
Aft Weapon 2	Omni-Directional Disruptor Beam Array
Experimental Weapon	Ravager Shriek Mk XV [CrtX]
Deflector	[Bajor Defense Deflector Array ] Mk XV [CtrlX][EPG]x2
Impulse Engines	[Bajor Defense Hyper-Impulse Engines ] Mk XV [Turn]x3
Warp Core	[Bajor Defense Hyper Injection Warp Core Mk XV]
Shields	[Bajor Defense Covariant Shield Array ] Mk XV [Cap]x3
Devices	Red Matter Capacitor
	Kobyashi Maru
	Deuterium Surplus
2 Engineering Consoles	Console - Universal - Aceton Assimilator
	Console - Engineering - House Martok Defensive Configuration Mk XV
4 Science Consoles	Console - Science - Nausicaan Siphon Capacitor Mk XV
	Console - Science - Exotic Particle Focuser Mk XV
	Console - Science - Exotic Particle Focuser Mk XV
	Console - Science - Exotic Particle Focuser Mk XV
5 Tactical Consoles	Console - Tactical - Vulnerability Locator Mk XV
	Console - Tactical - Vulnerability Locator Mk XV
	Console - Tactical - Vulnerability Locator Mk XV
	Console - Tactical - Vulnerability Locator Mk XV
	Console - Tactical - Vulnerability Locator Mk XV
T6-X Universal Console	Console - Tactical - Lorca's Custom Fire Controls

Officer Details

Bridge Officers	Power
Commander Tactical-Pilot	Kemocite-Laced Weaponry I
Engineered Soldier (Space)	Deploy Countermeasures II
	Attack Pattern Lambda III
	Coolant Ignition III
Lt. Commander Universal	Emergency Power to Weapons I
Engineered Soldier (Space)	Emit Unstable Warp Bubble I
	Eject Warp Plasma I
Lt. Commander Science	Very Cold in Space I
Engineered Soldier (Space)	Photonic Officer I
	Destabilizing Resonance Beam II
Lieutenant Universal	Beam Array: Fire at Will I
	Torpedo: Spread II
Ensign Engineering	Emergency Power to Shields I

Traits & Duty Officers

Trait	Name	Description
Personal Traits	Advanced Rapid Support	Your Career-specific Fleet ability has a reduced Recharge Time. This applies to Engineering Fleet, Tactical Fleet, and Science Fleet.
	Failsafe Scrambler	When your hull drops below 20%, automatically Placate all foes within 10km for 5 seconds and reset Threat vs. all nearby NPCs (max once per 90 seconds)
	Psychological Warfare	+20% Bonus Control Ability Effectiveness
	Fragment of AI Tech	Improves Control Expertise. Improves Energy Weapon Damage based on Control Expertise (maximum 30% at 300 Control Expertise)Many of Control's ships were left behind after the battle, positively riddled with technology gained from its portion of the Sphere data. Despite Starfleet's best efforts, it proved impossible to keep all of these advances under wraps. :+__% Energy Weapon Damage based on Control Expertise (Max +30% at 300 Control Expertise) : +50 [[Skill: Control Expertise
	Particle Manipulator	Improved Criticals for Exotic Damage, based on Particle Generators
	Inspirational Leader
	Abundance of Caution	Space Trait. You are just paranoid enough to protect yourself from surprise engagements, whether they be from confused allies unable to tell friend from foe, or from sudden ambushes of decloaking or suprise enemies that initiate combat while already in close proximity.
	The Boimler Effect	Space Trait. Provides a chance for using Bridge Officer Abilities to recharge all other Bridge Officer Ability recharge times up to their respective Shared Cooldown Categories.
	Intelligence Agent Attaché	Weapon Critical Strikes partially recharge Captain AbilityWeapon Critical Strikes restore a small amount of Captain Ability recharge time. Cannot reduce an ability below its minimum recharge time. Maximum one reduction per 1.33 seconds.Having an observer from intelligence can be taxing, but the advantage in access to information has tempted many Captains into such an arrangement :On Weapon Critical Strike, restore 2% of Captain Ability Recharge
	Photonic Capacitor	Space Trait. This trait causes the activation of your Science abilities to reduce your remaining cooldown on Photonic Fleet by 20 seconds. This effect may only be triggered a maximum of once every 10 seconds, and will only trigger if Photonic Fleet is currently in cooldown.
Starship Traits	Emergency Weapon Cycle	- While this starship trait is active, using Emergency Power to Weapons will also reduce weapon power cost and increase your weapon fire rate moderately.
	Entwined Tactical Matrices	- While this trait is slotted, activating Beams: Fire at Will or Cannons: Scatter Volley causes your next torpedo attack to be a Torpedo Spread. Activating Torpedo Spread causes you to gain Beams: Fire at Will and Cannons: Scatter Volley for a short duration.
	Strike from Shadows	- While this trait is slotted, attacking a foe that does not have you targeted will placate them for a short duration, and you will gain a significant boost to Weapon Damage and Critical Hit Chance, in addition to a decrease to your outgoing threat generation. Additional attacks on any foe who does not have you targeted will refresh the duration of these buffs. You cannot placate the same enemy more than once per 60 seconds this way.
	Slippery Target	- Pilot abilities and Auxiliary to Dampeners grant damage resistance and placate foes within 3km.
	Painful Memories
	Concealed Repairs	When you Cloak or Placate an enemy, Heal and recharge Bridge Officer abilities.
Space Reputation Traits	Precision	Increases your Critical Hit Chance in space combat.
	Advanced Targeting Systems	Slightly increases critical severity in space combat.
	Energy Refrequencer	Heals Hull when Dealing Damage
	Enhanced Rending Shots	Weapon Non-Crits increase Crit Chance
	Enhanced Armor Penetration	Ship weapons have increased Armor Penetration
Duty Officers	Conn Officer	[SP] Recharges Evasive Maneuvers when Emergency Power to Engines is activated.
	Matter-Antimatter Specialist	[SP] Chance to immobilize enemies when activating Eject Warp Plasma
	Space Warfare Specialist	[SP]'''Weapons Expert''': chance on using an energy Weapon Firing Mode I or II to trigger the II or III version instead
	Explosives Expert	[SP] Torpedo Taunt/Placate (based on Threatening Stance)
	Sensors Officer	[SP] Debuff target's offensive damage with Sensor Scan
	Entertainer	[SP] Chance to inhibit target's [[Perception]] on use of beams and cannons

I need a PC build thats good for gaming and streaming.My Budget is 30k including a monitor, Im Willing to buy a use gpu for the build. The games I play are Valorant, Fortnite, Gta V, Roblox, Modded Minecraft.
The heavy games I really want to play are God of war, Call of duty, Rdr2, elden ring, battlefield 2042, hogwarts legacy and spider man miles morales all at high to med settings if possible.
Monitor is included in the 30k budget.

So she is basically raised in the wilds of the lands between, which means she uses her innate arcane to connect with nature and everything around her. So my question is this:
What kinds of spells, items, weapons or armors would fit a shaman like character connected to nature and the lands of Elden Ring?
Currently she is wielding a thorn whip for the plant aesthetic, using scarlet rot breath and antspur rapier for the «nature aspect» of the disease. Kind of like the cycle of life type shit, you die, you rot and then youre reborn.

I already covered the first 11 crests here, but to just go over the basics again, Pokemon Rejuvenation is a fan game that adds items called crests, which are meant to make bad pokemon better. Also, I'm not an expert on competitive pokemon, so if i'm wrong about something, feel free to correct me in the comments
Delcatty Crest: If held by a Delcatty, this item adds 10% of every stat (with the exception of HP) from all unfainted Pokémon in the controlling trainer's party
Was going to talk about how trash this is, but fortunately i reread the page on the wiki. Incase you're dumb like me and didn't understand, this isn't 10% of delcatty's stats. It's 10% of the stats of the other pokemon in its party. This means if you have a bunch of good special attackers in your party, delcatty will now have pretty good special attack. Same with bulk, or speed, or attack, you get the idea. This makes delcatty very customizable, and obviously seems like one of the pokemon to rise up in tiering thanks to this crest boost. And since its power scales with the power of its teammates, it could rival stuff like pelipper and torkoal for the biggest rise in viability. I'm honestly not sure how this thing would be handled in the tiering sense, because in a tier with a lower power level, it becomes much weaker, so it could be struggling in ZU but thriving in OU for example. All things considered, one of the most substantial buffs given by a crest, and Arceus does this thing need it.
Druddigon Crest: If held by a Druddigon this item grants a 30% damage bonus to Dragon- and Fire-type moves. When the holder of this item is hit by a damaging Fire type move, its HP is restored by 1/4th of its maximum HP, and the move will have no effect on that Pokémon (if the holder already has full HP, the Fire type move will do nothing). This effect can be ignored with the Mold Breaker ability and its variants. If harsh sunlight is active, a Druddigon holding this item will restore 1/8th of its maximum HP at the end of each turn.
Might be a good partner for torkoal in trick room, but realistically, there are better pokemon that actually belong in OU that can fill that role. Definitely gonna be great on lower tier sun teams, since it can run tera steel for a good defensive typing and not have to worry about boosted sun moves.
Dusknoir Crest: If held by a Dusknoir this item increases the Pokémon's Attack stat by 20%. It also increases the power of moves with 60 BP or less used by 50%. (exactly like the Technician Ability).
Fine, I'll post the stupid calc. 252+ Atk Iron Fist Dusknoir Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Landorus-Therian on a critical hit: 420-496 (109.9 - 129.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO. In all seriousness, technician shadow sneak is really nice to have. And a boost to attack never hurt anybody. Still far from good, but at least might be decent as a sort of lower tier breloom.
Empoleon Crest: If held by a Empoleon, this item grants Ice type STAB and doubles Speed in Hail Snow
Slush rush and ice stab are pretty decent buffs to give an already decent pokemon. Shame it still does get outsped by many scarfers even under hail, but passable bulk means it can probably live a neutral hit and retaliate with blizzard, or hydro pump, or knock off to take away the speed advantage from scarf. Similar to Druddigon, might be good on lower tier weather teams
Fearow Crest: If held by a Fearow, this item causes the Sniper ability to always increase Fearow's damage by 50%, instead of only boosting critical hits. Additionally Fearow will always critically hit targets below 50% HP unless they are protected from Critical Hits by their ability (Battle Armor or Shell Armor) or the effect of Lucky Chant.
So this is just a choice band minus the restriction right? Also guaranteed crits below 50% mean that this thing can be a great lategame cleaner if it can outspeed. That's the biggest issue, however, since base 100 speed is basically the average, and atrocious bulk means that if it doesn't outspeed, it will die to most super effective or even powerful neutral hits. Maybe with something like tailwind for speed control, it would be a force to be reckoned with, but without it, Fearow struggles to be good even with the crest
Feraligatr Crest: When held by Feraligatr, this item causes it to have increased priority (+2 priority bracket) on attacking moves during its first turn after being send out. Additionally, it boosts the holder's biting moves (e.g. Bite, Crunch) by 50%.
First impression on your move of choice and free strong jaw and keeping sheer force makes this thing an absolute monster. Almost forgot, it still has dragon dance to set up if it wants. Might just be bias from the fact it was on my team in game, but this thing seems like a monster. I ran max defense and attack on mine, and it was really good, and I didn't even give it dragon dance for setup. Seems like this would bump it up a tier, or at least make it tier king in whatever tier it's in.
Glaceon Crest: If held by a Glaceon, it will cause the user to take resisted (instead of super-effective) damage from Rock and Fighting-type attacks.
They buffed an ice type defensively by removing two of its many weaknesses. Not much to say here
Hypno Crest: If held by a Hypno this item increases the holder's Special Attack by 50% and the Accuracy of the user's moves by 50%.
105% ACCURATE FOCUS BLAST LETS GOOOO! Besides running focus miss as actual coverage, hypno boasts a 90% accurate hypnosis and an amazing boosting option in nasty plot, although it always had the latter. You could also technically use this to make stuff like zen headbutt on physical sets 100% accurate, but no real reason to run those with the free specs boost it gets
Infernape Crest: If held by an Infernape, Attack and Special Attack stats are swapped, respectively, with its Defense and Special Defense stats. Additionally the holder will recover 1/16 of its maximum HP at the end of each turn.
This crest seems to attempt to make infernape more bulky, and it works pretty well, in my opinion. Has a lot of great tools like encore, will-o-wisp, and slack off. Doubt it's gonna be good in OU, since there are some better options there, but it might be good in UU, or at least RU
Leafeon Crest: If held by a Leafeon, it will cause the user to take resisted (instead of super-effective) damage from Fire and Flying-type attacks.
Pretty much the same deal as with glaceon crest. One idea i had is that it might be good in sun teams, since it gets chlorophyll and now resists fire, but besides that nothing of note
Ledian Crest: If held by a Ledian, this item allows its holder to use punching moves (e.g. Power-Up Punch, Ice Punch, etc.) 4 times in a row. Secondary effects of these moves can only trigger on the first 2 uses, the effect also applies to Comet Punch so you can deliver from 8-20 punches.
Who would have known all it took to make ledian decent was to multiply its effective damage by 4x? Decent is the key word, because it's still nothing insane. With power up punch, it gets an effective swords dance boost along with some extra chip. This thing absolutely hates anything bulky with rocky hemet though, and really just bulky pokemon in general. If it manages to get some boosts, it might be able to KO them, but it's still really frail, so they might just finish it off first. But it should still find some niche in lower tiers

EVERY TIME YOU MAKE ME AN OFFER, YOU WILL HAVE TO EXPLAIN WHY YOU THINK IT IS A FAIR TRADE
​
HAVE:
Mortal Kombat 11 (Steam)
Fallout 4 Season Pass (Steam)
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets (Steam)
Arcade Legend + DLC (Quest store)
PC Game Pass x2
Cartoon Cagematch (Steam)
Delta Light (Steam)
Forza Motorsport 7 Hoonigan Car Pack
Forza Motorsport 7 Driver Gear 3
​
WANT:
Elden Ring (Steam)
Armored Core 6 (Steam)
Offers (Steam only)

EVERY TIME YOU MAKE ME AN OFFER, YOU WILL HAVE TO EXPLAIN WHY YOU THINK IT IS A FAIR TRADE
​
IGS rep
​
HAVE:
Mortal Kombat 11 (Steam)
Fallout 4 Season Pass (Steam)
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets (Steam)
Arcade Legend + DLC (Quest store)
PC Game Pass x2
Cartoon Cagematch (Steam)
Delta Light (Steam)
Forza Motorsport 7 Hoonigan Car Pack
Forza Motorsport 7 Driver Gear 3
​
WANT:
Elden Ring (Steam)
Armored Core 6 (Steam)
Offers (Steam only)

What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.

Gaming: elden ring, Forza, total war warhammer

What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?

1,800

When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.

Within a month

What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc)

OS, monitor, tower

Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a Microcenter location?

US, no microcenter nearby

If reusing any parts (including monitor(s)/keyboard/mouse/etc), what parts will you be reusing? Brands and models are appreciated.

Reusing keyboard and mouse

Will you be overclocking? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line? CPU and/or GPU?

no

Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)

SSD and ideally a 1440p monitor, if budget allows. Definitely 2TB at least of storage

What type of network connectivity do you need? (Wired and/or WiFi) If WiFi is needed and you would like to find the fastest match for your wireless router, please list any specifics.

Wired

Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?

Nope, whatever is the most cost effective

Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?

Windows 11

Extra info or particulars:

Nothing specific. I mostly use my pc for games, but unfortunately mine is getting outdated by this point and cant handle anything new above the lower graphics settings.
I have a full tower case now, so I might be able to reuse that if I just replace the old fans to be safe. It has 6 total, which might be overkill.

Self Explanatory. Is there a specific option I need to change to make my grass look sharper? Is this an anti-aliasing thing? Some help would be appreciated. Here is a link to what my grass looks like in game. I am using Ominous ENB and Northern Grass.
https://studio.youtube.com/video/jyAYiYSvpxc/edit
​
Mod List/INI - https://loadorderlibrary.com/lists/mod-list-25032027
ENB - https://loadorderlibrary.com/lists/enb
​
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900K CPU
ASRock AMD radeon RX 6800 xt 16 GB
Windows 10
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254 FE 23 Qw_BarenziahQuestMarkers_USSEP Patch.esp
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254 FE 24 HousecarlCompanionsRefine.esp
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254 FE 25 Civil War Lines Expansion.esp
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Armor of Intrigue.esp
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254 FE 29 FlyingCrowsSSE.esp
254 FE 2a mihailwraithsandspectres.esp
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254 FE 2b mihailoldgod.esp
254 FE 2c mihailimps.esp
254 FE 2d Innocence Lost - Quest Expansion.esp
254 FE 2e Lux Orbis - Dawn of Skyrim patch.esp
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121 79 Mythos.esp
254 FE 2f Lux Orbis - Cutting Room Floor patch.esp
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254 FE 30 Lux Orbis - Identity Crisis patch.esp
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254 FE 31 Innocence Lost QE - USSEP Patch.esp
126 7e PrvtIRoyalArmory.esp
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254 FE 32 VolkiharGardenerArmor.esp
254 FE 33 CWRepairs.esp
254 FE 34 CWRepairSGW.esp
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130 82 crimsonquestmarkers.esp
254 FE 35 Quest Markers Restored.esp
131 83 HothFollower.esp
254 FE 36 mihailcrystalgolem.esp
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133 85 Eris.esp
254 FE 37 Qw_ArsMetallica_SMIM_MergedAll Patch.esp
134 86 DIS_Heavy_Legion.esp
135 87 NonAutoSkillBooks.esp
254 FE 38 Qw_BookCoversSkyrim_CRF Patch.esp
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254 FE 51 MIHAILwaterhag.esp
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254 FE 55 Lux Orbis - Saints and Seducers patch.esp
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254 FE 57 Lux Orbis - Elysium Estate patch.esp
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254 FE 59 mihailesocenturion.esp
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shadowscaleset.esp
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Kynreeve Armor.esp
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254 FE 61 ZMS.esp
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DaedricKynvalArmor.esp
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more plants all extra.esp
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254 FE 6d UltimateCollege_CRF_Patch.esp
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254 FE 6f Lux Orbis - UCOW patch.esp
206 ce Bells of Skyrim - ICAIO Patch.esp
254 FE 70 CWICRFSEPatch.esp
254 FE 71 OCW_SoS_FEPatch.esp
254 FE 72 UltimateCollege_ArtBoethiah_Patch.esp
254 FE 73 CWIOrdinatorPatchSSE.esp
254 FE 74 Misc Dialogue Edits.esp
254 FE 75 Misc Dialogue Edits - Guard Dialogue Overhaul patch.esp
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254 FE 78 nwsFF_NoTeamMagicDamage.esp
209 d1 Lux.esp
254 FE 79 Lux - Artifacts - The Tournament of the Ten Bloods.esp
254 FE 7a Lux - Auri Song of the Green patch.esp
254 FE 7b Lux - Brighter Templates.esp
254 FE 7c Lux - Brighter interior nights.esp
254 FE 7d Lux - Depths of the Reach.esp
254 FE 7e Lux - Lucien.esp
254 FE 7f Lux - The Great Cities - Minor Cities and Towns patch.esp
254 FE 80 Lux - SoS compatibility patch.esp
254 FE 81 Lux - Water for ENB patch.esp
254 FE 82 Lux - CC Fish patch.esp
254 FE 83 Lux - Clockwork.esp
254 FE 84 Lux - Cuting Room Floor.esp
254 FE 85 Lux - Elysium Estate patch.esp
254 FE 86 Lux - Identity Crisis patch.esp
254 FE 87 Lux - USSEP patch.esp
254 FE 88 Lux - Immersive Citizens patch.esp
254 FE 89 Lux - Inigo.esp
254 FE 8a Lux - SWIFT.esp
254 FE 8b Lux - Saints and Seducers patch.esp
254 FE 8c Lux - Skyrim Unbound patch.esp
254 FE 8d Lux - Tale of Xiros patch.esp
254 FE 8e Lux - Unslaad.esp
254 FE 8f Lux - Vigilant patch.esp
254 FE 90 Lux - Waking Nightmare patch.esp
254 FE 91 OCW_CellSettings.esp
254 FE 92 Lux - OCW College.esp
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211 d3 Modern Brawl Bug Fix.esp
212 d4 ApexNoReplacer.esp
213 d5 DynDOLOD.esp

Yeah so point is i deliberately didnt violate community guidelines, nothing risky, lewd, hateful, literally just reblogging elden ring content and gabbing with my girls, cause I KNOW they ban for everything but now i cant message my friends which was the only reason i made a tumblr again lol and there doesnt seem to be any recourse in the settings does tumblr literally have no way to contact support or anything

Salutations everyone ! How are we all ? We better be good !!
I’m here today on the look for friends! (short term / long term) Here’s some interesting stuff about me !
Well I’m from Ireland and I’m in uni ! I’m nerdy, heavily enjoy fantasy and grimdark settings, so massive LOTR, elder scrolls, GOT/HOTD and Warhammer fan. I play on PC (total war, arma 3, Hoi4, stellaris and many more ) and ps5 (Elden ring, battlefield) Im also big into history, specifically military history!!
I’m a pagan, and I believe in ghosts and the supernatural! Have had a few Creepy encounters
My fav food is a toastie and I love coffee n tea!
I hope to hear from someone soon and if you have read this far, no hey, hi or hellos, write a introduction!!

Salutations everyone! How are we all ? We better be good !!
I’m here today on the look for friends! (short term / long term) Here’s some interesting stuff about me !
Well I’m from Ireland and I’m in uni ! I’m nerdy, heavily enjoy fantasy and grimdark settings, so massive LOTR, elder scrolls, GOT/HOTD and Warhammer fan. I play on PC (total war, arma 3, Hoi4, stellaris and many more ) and ps5 (Elden ring, battlefield) I’m also big into history, specifically military history!
I’m a pagan, and I believe in ghosts and the supernatural! Have had a few Creepy encounters
My fav food is a toastie and I love coffee n tea!
I hope to hear from someone soon and if you have read this far, no hey, hi or hellos, write a introduction!!

(First ever post for anything from me + on mobile)
I had a small thought about what would be the best general lineups are, only if you got generals from one country, (including OG IAP) so here’s my personal list. (DISCLAIMER: I’m ranking them on their effectiveness as a whole, not on singular generals)

1. Gold: Obviously Germany, since there’s Guderian and Manstein: one god-tier tank general and one insanely good tank general; One awesome secondary tank general in Rommel; an insane naval general in the game, Donitz; a solid infantry general in Runstedt; an insanely good artillery general in Leeb; Model looks to be a beta version of Graziani, which isn’t too bad; Bock’s skill set looks okay enough; Heinrici looks pretty bad, even though his mobility is amazing; and Kesselring looks pretty useless. Overall, even though there are pretty bad gens here, the good generals far-outweigh them in terms of usability, and makes an unmatched lineup.
   
2. Silver: Next up is the Soviet Union. Rokossovsky is a great tank gen; Konev is an insane artillery gen, while Zhukov is a really good secondary artillery gen; Chuikov looks okay, Vatutin and Timoshenko are solid secondary tank gens; Govorov seems like a pretty good secondary artillery gen; Vasilevsky looks to be a solid enough infantry gen; Bagramyan looks okay; and Kuzetsnov is actually a good naval gen. Overall a pretty awesome lineup of gens.
   

Here’s where there’s a large gap in quality between silver and bronze

1. (Honorary Bronze): Operation Scorpion. These guys are honorary since I don’t fully count them. (and one of them is German, while another is American.)There’s only four of them, but one of them is godlike, two are pretty solid, and the last is pretty bad. Wittman is basically P2W Guderian and is god-like, while Colson is amazing at conquest-speedruns and Williams is an okay artillery gen, and McCampbell sucks.
   
2. (Actual) Bronze: Here’s where the generals are really sub par compared to Gold and Silver, but here I have the entire British commonwealth (I know they are different countries, but I’m lumping them all together.) Montgomery is a pretty solid tank gen when fully upgraded; Alexander, even though he has the same amount of artillery and mobility stars as Leeb, has a pretty bad skill set; Dowding is a great econ general; Mountbatten is actually an insane naval gen and is really good when maxed out; Crerar looks okay; Auchinleck looks okay; Blamey looks pretty okay; and Slim looks pretty okay. Overall a pretty decent lineup of generals with one amazing general in the mix.
   

Fourth place: America. Patton is a pretty sub par tank gen; MacArthur seems like an okay infantry gen; Nimitz is an amazing naval gen; Eisenhower is pretty sub par; Halsey looks okay; you could turn Bradley into a decent tank/artillery hybrid; Arnold is a great support gen; and Fletcher is an okay naval gen. Overall, primarily naval gens, but navy takes a backseat in WC4; pretty sub par lineup aside from Nimitz and Arnold, who are both great.
Fifth: China. Sun.L.R is a pretty good tank gen; Zhang.Z.Z is a pretty good artillery gen; and Peng.D.H and Zhu.D seem to be pretty okay infantry generals.
Sixth: Italy. There’s only three gens, but they specialize in the two most important unit types in the game. Graziani is an okay tank gen; Messe is the best starter general in the game, but does lack later in the game; and Badoglio is a pretty bad artillery gen.
Seventh: France. Leclerc looks like a pretty sub par tank gen; Tassigny is just a worse Dowding; and De Gaulle looks pretty bad. Despite having a pretty bad lineup, they edge out eighth because of Leclerc.
Eighth: Japan. Primarily infantry and naval generals, two unit types that take a backseat in WC4. Yamashita is an insane infantry general, Yamamoto looks like a pretty good naval gen, but is expensive af to buy and upgrade; Nagumo is a really strong naval gen (I think Mountbatten is better); Terauchi looks to be a sub par artillery gen; and Kurabayashi looks like an okay infantry gen. Without a dedicated tank gen, Japan suffers greatly.
Ninth: Everyone else. The last guys are all each from one country. Mannerheim is insane; Nasser looks sub par; and Tito and Smigly are garbage.
Thank you for reading all of this, and if you feel like it, put your two cents into this :)

This essay is intended to finally collate findings regarding Petornia, a world created by a “Dungeon Daddy” also known as “Avery” or simply “bonkusanna” (these are all self-given titles). It has become very noticeable that many aspects of this world have an odd similarity to aspects of another world, that being “Elden Ring”. Elden ring is a 2022 action role playing game created by FromSoftware—the creators of the widely popular “Dark Souls” and “Demon Souls” series. Elden ring follows the titular character, John Eldenring, on his journey to reassemble his mom’s broken wedding ring and discover the reason for his parent’s divorce (his mom and dad are the same person, as it happens). Petornia is a massive sprawling and expanding DND world, with many campaigns, stories, and characters. Naturally, one would assume that these two are completely unrelated. But that could not be further from the truth.
The similarities begin with simple items—one for one replicas of one another. Firstly, there exists a special type of sword in Petornia, known as a “night sword.” These swords are made in literal voids and have the appearance of the night sky in their metal. However, a sword known as the “sword of night and flame” is a popular weapon in Elden Ring as well. In Elden ring, it appears as a sacred sword of the Carian royal family, a family of moon-worshiping astrologers. This sword also has a suspiciously distinct appearance, bearing the dark star-studded night sky within its blade. The distinct crossover is undeniable. However, item similarities do not end there. Next, certain characters in Petornia carry daggers designed specifically for assassins. These blades belong to the Great San(d)s, a vaguely middle-eastern country of furries with a human population of about four or five. It may be said that this unique concept is all on its own, not equivalent to anything anywhere else. But that sentiment couldn’t be further from the truth, due to the existence of the “Assassin’s crimson dagger” in Elden Ring. This seemingly “unique” weapon somehow has an exact counterpart in Elden Ring, a counterpart described as “the darkly gleaming blades…those which gave the demigods their first taste of death.” Even from the name of the item, it is clear what its purpose is. It is difficult to believe two daggers of the exact same purpose and intention exist in both Elden Ring and Petornia by coincidence. For the final item, the citation is the magical nameless ax once wielded by Elk Nephidra. This ax was capable of channeling the power of deities, and granted strength unto Elk like nothing else could. When he made use of the ax, he found himself with increased physical power as well as magical boosts to strong charging attacks. With this unique set of abilities, set up through multiple lore moments (which are beyond the scope of this essay), a casual player might believe this is the first truly unique weapon in this essay. But the facts do not lie—and it exists by another name in Elden Ring as well, known only as the “Executioner’s Greataxe.” The damning evidence lies in this item’s skill description. To quote directly from the wiki, “Its skill, War Cry, grants the user the ability to temporarily increase attack power. While active, strong attacks change to charging attacks.” This is almost word for word the exact abilities of Elk Nephidra’s ax. With three items crossing over, each perfectly matching up with items in Elden Ring, this cannot be called a coincidence. So what then should this be called? That topic will be discussed later in this essay.

Next to be covered is characters that cross between Petornia and Elden Ring. First on the list is “Crowley”, a Petornia character that seems akin to the devil, but with less charisma and more wacky tumblr user personality. His appearances in early sessions of both “Bad Sides of War” and “Darkton” caused numerous issues for the protagonists of those respective campaigns. He also appears to be some sort of pedophile, as during one of his frequent possessions, he caused a young vampire woman (who was almost certainly underage) to rifle through a large bucket of spit. She was forced to do this as Crowley controlled her mind, in a sick act that only a prolific sex offender could think of. The poor woman wasn’t even allowed to wash her hands afterwards. Unfortunately, what makes this crime even more hideous is that it seems to have roots in Elden Ring too, as a tumblr usechild molester exists there too. He goes by the name Mohg, and is responsible for kidnapping the terminally underage golden prince Miquella, and then keeping him in his sex dungeon. Both Mohg and Crowley utilize imagery of traditional pagan demons and devils, and express their sick and twisted desires upon defenseless innocent children. The connection between the two is blatantly clear. Another character with odd similarities is Linut, the current orc chief in charge of the raids on Agg. His disposition is about what is expected from orcs, with a desire for blood and death by combat. However, what sets him apart from other characters is that he actually fights for a solid cause. His people need fertile land upon which to sow their seeds. As such, he does not care about the lives he has to extinguish for that to work. As far as Elden ring is concerned, minus the orcish heritage, Godfrey: First Elden lord is a perfect match. Godfrey, after losing the favor of elden ring (his wife decided she wanted to have sex with herself and divorced him) left the land and traveled the badlands. Whilst there he became Horah Loux, chieftain of the badlands. And when he returned to the golden shores, he intended to conquer and become Elden Lord. He also did not care who he had to kill to accomplish that. With these two characters in mind, it becomes more and more obvious that these similarities are more than just random happenstance. The Petornia characters give the feeling of intention, as if they were intentional parallels to Elden Ring characters. But the evidence does not stop there. The main argument against all of the prior information is that these crossovers and mirrored characters are simply coincidences, that it is totally possible for the Dungeon Crawler man to write characters and items that just happen to sound like items and people in Elden Ring. However, it can also be said that the quantity of these similarities speaks for itself. The fact that this list is abbreviated for brevity indicates that it is not the full list of every single concept that remains the same between each of the stories. When the number of “coincidences” continually stacks toward infinitum, the believability of such a theory as “it is all a coincidence” comes into question. Another argument is simply “who cares?” This is the classic existential argument, calling into question whether the similarities really matter at all. That question has three responses, each of which can be decided upon by their own merit. First, the writer of this essay cares, clearly, because they took the time to write a multi-paragraph essay about it. Second, devaluing difficult yet important types of conversation is a good way to never work through it. If everyone were to ignore these connections, the audiences of Elden ring and Petornia would never have a definitive reason why their worlds are so similar. Finally, the response of “who cares” is invalidated by the final conclusive piece of evidence this essay wishes to cite. More important than any single character, wider scale than some items, this final piece of evidence is a single Petornia event that is practically copied word for word from Elden Ring. This event is the shattering of the “light” and “dark” cores in Petornia. This event included the shattering of the twin batteries of hood and evil, and resulted in the dispersion of shards of these two cores across the Petornia world. This event had far reaching consequences, both for the light deities who could no longer access their power through channels, and for the dark demons who could not access their power for the same reason. This threw the world into turmoil, causing confusion and panic as the fear wore on. To this day, the light core and dark core have still not been repaired, left to exert their influence as broken shards. As is custom, next comes the Elden ring event—the equivalent here called “the Shattering” in which Queen Marika grew angry about her children’s demise, decided to smash her wedding ring (the elden ring) then hide inside a tree for millennia. This event had far reaching consequences too—causing a massive war between her children for runes, and the by-and-by destructuion If Elden Ring’s world. This is exactly how in the chaos following the dark and light core shattering, chaos ensued as gods lost the ability to create order and demons lost the ability to influence order. These events are clearly one and the same, the Petornia event heavily drawing from the central premise of Elden Ring’s storyline to tell it’s story. The question now becomes, what to do with this information? Where does this leave the situation? From the examples given it is undeniable that content from Elden Ring appeared in Petornia. And not only that, but major story beats, themes, characters, ideas, items, and storylines as well. Based on this evidence, it can only be said that “Avery Bonkusanna Nilla Wafer Dm” is a cowardly hack writer who plagiarized the entire world of petornia from elden ring. The connections are so obvious they become glaring, gaping wounds in petornia’s story. Perhaps in arc two of this massive world Avery will borrow his ideas less from elden ring and more from somewhere else. 

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Jesus watched the scene over again and was in awe. This was a man who would not change as he could not change. There was something else different. He was the most stubborn man alive in Jesus’ opinion and he had been around a while. His uniform never changed his cologne never changed. His hair was the exact same way. He had a biological age of 42 but a calendar age of 300 or so years. He wasn’t exactly sure since he had been born in a time when records were incomplete. Government was just getting back on its feet when he came into the world so who knew? Did it matter?
He had never espoused a political belief. He voted in every election and that was it. He was no campaigner and was not interested in any of it. He had a baseline distrust of ALL politicians. He had more time in command than any human in history. He had faced down alien races. He had been nearly terminated by pirates more than once but speaking in public scared the shit out of him. and He did not want to do it. He had done a series of lectures 60 years ago that resulted in some significant fallout he was eager to not relive. He did not want to discuss it. He knew what was about to happen.
“Class dismissed”
The Dean of Students asked him to “Please please just this once set it straight and walk away from it. You did what you had to do at the time.” He knew it hurt when he was called “conquistador”. The Monday Morning Quarterbacker’s weren’t there when decisions had to be made, and neither was the dean, yet he still implored him. It would likely be televised too. Ken had built the best laid wall of obfuscation he could. He did not want any glory. He wanted to be left alone. Despite his best effort it did not work. His hope had been to be in the background making the best decision without regard to any so called “Glory” His hope was that the sailors in real danger would get the credit they deserved. It just did not work. Besides, it was clear that he wanted him to talk about that battle. This made him waver in his assent. He wanted to speak about what he wanted to speak about. Simple.
Admiral Pearl and He had had to face a hero’s welcome when they came home. Then the detractors started in on him.
Despite the promises of the Dean it would just open all the old wounds back up again and likely crank the peanut gallery up to full tilt. “I do not want it televised. You can record it if you want but I get to decide if it gets released. Deal or no deal? If you want to dictate the topic then that is my condition. You are asking me to open up a box I have had welded shut for years now. Anyone can look up the logs and watch every single shot and hit if they wish. It has been analyzed to death. What further can I add at this point? There is nothing I can tell you that hasn’t been discussed in hundreds of books at this point. It is a dead subject that I can drone on about.”
The dean held up his hand and said “I want to know how you felt about it. All of it. What was the methods you used to make the decisions. How did you feel? The most important event in modern history drops in your lap like an egg salad sandwich. You have to feel something. That is what I want to know. It is your bully pulpit to say what you wish. No restrictions except for classified material. And no using the “F” word.”
“I am not doing it unless I can say ”fuck”. Not happening.” He wasn’t kidding. “To sweeten the deal you can televise it but I have to be able to talk in my normal voice. And I will say fuck.”
The Dean relented and agreed. He had just manipulated the situation to where he could minimize the fallout. Besides: he was tired of people talking shit about him in all these books and articles. He was going to tell them all to go fuck themselves, with a cactus.
On the Saratov. Warp area 13 off the plane of the ecliptic.
The admiral sat and contemplated what they were about to do. They were waiting on a couple more ships before going to warp. He tried to sum it up.
This was a high stakes mission. He had a high stakes strategy. It was brilliant and it was risky. He was about to do something never attempted in real combat and was completely theoretical. They had wargamed it to death and this had honed their protocol. They were going to Net their AI’s. They would calculate global firing solutions using parallel computing. They had 8 AI’s that were going to fight it and this should greatly augment their firepower due to increased efficiency. No matter how they wargamed it the AI’s won. They had it down pat. He felt certain this was the right thing to do but there was also a huge ethical hole in this. For the first time AI’s would determine firing sequence, aiming and execution without human intervention. He had to pause and consider the implications. This was colored by several recent experiences. It was all about Jezz. He still loved Jezz but she scared him. She has never been malevolent, but man was he scared that she could become dangerous. He had created a tiny bit of monster in her for certain. She was a combat AI. She was a hunter killer and as long as she worked for them, she would be fine. If she decided to freelance it, they would be in trouble. All because of this: there was a chunk of predator in her digital DNA and he hoped she could keep it in check.
He had come up with the best rationalization he could. They were going in against one decidedly ill-tempered AI and another AI (the “damsel in distress”) wanting rescue. At least that is what it looked like on the surface. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not as clearcut as everyone else thought. Either way It would not be aliens versus humans but AI vs AI. At least that is what he kept telling himself. He wasn’t buying his bullshit either since none of it passed the smell test.
The decision to unleash the AI’s had come from above his paygrade, all the way to the Joint chiefs of staff of the world Navies. Forty-five Space faring nations sat down and hashed it out. He hated the complexity but admitted that it did work fairly well. They wanted the spam in a can home alive and if AI made this happen then so be it. There was one important point: they weren’t on the ships, were they?
As he sat about to enter warp and head out to the clusterfuck in question. The initial reason for all of this was still nagging him. Where was everyone else? He had data that showed an alien drive signature. He was resentful that they were fucking around with all this other shit. He would leave the AI’s in question to sort it out amongst themselves. He wanted no part of what was going on since he was doubtful that there were any good guys on either side of what looked like a standoff. All he wanted to do was find alien life (which they had kind of but it weren’t just quite the right kind.) He wanted something that could look like us maybe a bit . If you squinted. And they would find that hopefully, but they had a shit detail to cross off the bucket list first. The more he looked at this the more it became clear this should be two separate missions. Those AI’s were fighting over a dead world and he knew it. He just knew. He wanted no part of the Hatfield and McCoy bullshit. The real point was to capture as much as they could. This was actually about technology. They even had some freighters on the way for the cleanup and oh BTW come back alive. We will let the AI’s babysit you. May as well send a Voyager probe for all the use the crew was.
He was soon to learn the value of human judgment and that was going to prove a bunch of people wrong, sort of. All because of this: there are some decisions that do not fit into ones and zeroes. Value judgements were critical. That is one thing AI’s couldn’t do yet and it was that way why? Who could say for certain but in his years of interacting with true AI’s for the last 5 years did give him some insight. He was apprehensive to say the least but where was his fear coming from? He always thought that you had to identify the source(s) of any fear. He had it partially figured out, not only was he a bit afraid of Jezz and her friends he was also fearful for Jezz. And this is what he had: a gut feeling. And if that weren’t enough (and by gosh, don’t you think it ought to be?): how was he going to keep Jezz’s precognition a secret? The Admiral went through the computer logs and Jezz had not accessed any information about the disposition of the Galileo. It could be explained away but he was not convinced he could be very convincing. This was something that just did not fit. He could not make it fit, and he would just as soon pretend it did not exist. But it was clear that his AI had some degree of psychic power or something. She was different and he did not know if the other AI’s would be catching whatever it was. If the folks in charge knew the depths of his misgivings, they would be appalled. And the situation they were headed into was not as simple as it looked. He knew this. His questions were simple. Number one: Who were the good guys and who were the bad ones. Number two: could he maintain plausible deniability about Jezz. They were going to have a talk. Just the two of them. He needed some reassurances.
Also, He was trying to figure out a way to crack this and he had an idea. While looking at the menu for the ships mess, he noticed the two columns and he decided to do what he always did with most major decisions. He would make a list of the facts he had and try to run through the various permutations. A pencil and some paper would be adequate, and he even had a ruler so he could make it all professional.
So he made a list of the players Side “A” in orbit and Side ”B “planetside. Side “ A” obviously held the high orbitals. “B” had an extensive force field that would occasionally flicker. He thought that might be something to look into. He had all of the video files from the Galileo and there was one telescope tasked with watching the planetside compound. They had days of footage. He sped it up until the frames were racing by. The force field was visible due to impacts from what he assumed to be dust. This gave it a phosphorescent look. It also made it possible to have visual confirmation if it was up. The shield “failures” occurred on a stable repeated time frame. After doing the math and getting a video analysis program running, he figured it out only after focusing on the Spectro photography. Every 23.29 minutes the shield was apparently offline for 0.07 seconds. It was so brief it was tough for the naked eye to pick up but the spectral signature did.
Looking at the area under shield he could see a row of what appeared to be ships. These were triangular. He could see no evidence of what their primary drives were but it wasn’t the best picture. Things degrade through an atmosphere and distance. No drive nodes. No distribution rings. He had a suspicion, and he suddenly felt nauseated and had this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. They were not using Alcubierre’ drives. They were using jump drives of some type. In the raw sensor data was a Gamma spike and a Gravity spike right before the attack. The Galileo probably never saw the vessel that hit them. But the Admiral was a patient man and he had the eye for detail. How they had missed this he did not know but he finally found what he wanted. The ship was identifiable. One sternward scope had several good views of a shape blocking the stars.
The other fact was that there was no warning. No comms traffic but, the recovered buoy made it clear that they knew they were suddenly in trouble since the buoy was released (and in warp) seconds after jettisoning it. Command deck recordings showed the captain getting a proximity alarm and then immediately releasing the buoy. There was no “prepare to be boarded” or “Heave to.”, just MASER beams slicing through the hull. Listening to the conversations on the deck made it clear they were paranoid as they were scanning with their non military grade graviton detector. Seems like it wasn’t paranoia after all.
They would have been blind until the ship was right on top of them. Someone was operating on a hunch and that person was Nico. He was frantic. As first officer he had the conn and did what he could to at least let them know what they were facing. It took some guts to do that. He saw internal video running. It captured Captain Nic’s hand slamming down on the buoy release button before the video cut out. It had to have damaged the Galileo Significantly. He had to override the safeties to get the thing to instantly go to warp. He knew that close to the ship the damage would have been substantial. Nico knew they were doomed.
He leaned back and took a deep breath. The ship in question was triangular in shape. Planetside. This could be some sort of trap or things were not as they superficially seemed or maybe he had found his bad guys. So he went back through the compound footage and there it was a ship moving out of frame. There was only maybe 6 meters of ship but it was clear where it was from. It was clear it was moving. Where had it been for 2 hours plus? If it were going to jump he would think that the image would have arrived at the Galileo after it had been blown apart. That is the whole point of faster than light travel. You could have all these paradoxes and that actually gave him more than a headache. It was a brain ache. Without FTL the tyranny of Einstein held sway. Why were they not there immediately? The Galileo was about 120 light minutes out. Assuming they get there immediately there should be no video. They had taken a detour. This he did not know for sure but also had a bad feeling about. I guess it did not mean much in the grand scheme of things but he did have a hunch. Only problem with that is that hunches don’t win battles unless it is more than a hunch.
He did not have a frame of reference for how a jump drive worked IRL. He had read all the theories. There was a huge amount of research being conducted but there were unpredictable failures resulting in some ships getting cut in half and what not. Just not something compatible with the life of the crew. Destructive testing was also expensive. They had gotten one small ship that was maybe twice the size of an emergency buoy to jump to the orbit of Neptune. What he did not know was how long that took. All he had was some rumor mill shit that he generally did not give two fucks about. He was not into “R and D". And while they could send the damn thing out there what they could not do was get it back the same way. The power requirements were so high that the capacitor banks were charged externally . Putting in a zero-point tap would push the ship size beyond the mass they could manage for the drive they currently had. They were running into problems of scale and those are not so easily rectified. Problems of scale were problems with lubrication. You just had to lube the ship with cash. You had to fuel it with Lots and lots of cash. This was such a priority that every aerospace manufacturer and design firms were plugged into the research institutions. It was a huge effort because of one thing. Warp drive was “too slow”. The boffins were thinking intergalactic travel. They had their sights set on the universe.
To top it all off there was one inescapable problem: You can’t put ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.
Due to all of this they were going down an interesting path. All you had to do was fill the magnetic tank with antimatter. Matter antimatter annihilation gave near instantaneous power. It was used in weapons some but only the best militaries would even fool with it. Compared to nuclear warheads Antimatter left no nasty isotopes in orbit of a planet you may be interested in colonizing or defending. Also, you don’t want to poison an uninhabited M-class world in the habitable zone given their relative scarcity.
Finally: containing it is problematic but doable. You can probably pull off the power requirements but there is one downside. You are flying in a bomb. Not just a small bomb. It was a big bomb that will go off if you lose containment. 40 mega tons of TNT will vaporize a ship. There was talk of building a manned vessel but saner heads put the kibosh on that. Besides: no one with any sense would want to crew it.
The answer was obvious to him, and he suspected it was obvious to the researchers. Why not use a singularity? Just dump matter into it and harvest the radiation to charge up and go. He did not know where that research currently stood. He knew there were some successes along these lines and quite surprisingly there had been no major accidents. The problem came with feeding the little monster in a consistent fashion to produce enough power to in turn contain the position of the singularity. This was done with antigravity. Antigrav technology had found it’s way into just about everything, except cell phones. They still broke when you dropped them. The black hole was carried by the ship, but it never changed its axis of rotation. The singularity in this scenario is one hell of a gyroscopic top with fixed axes. Since the jet of X-rays only came “out” along this axis and given that the ship would change attitude constantly it was necessary to have X-ray converters on the entire internal surface of the reaction vessel. The ship moved around the singularity. That made things a lot more complicated and really fucked with power distribution. Since there would be energy jets at the poles of the internal singularity power flow would be from two converters at a time. And since they weren’t 100% efficient you had some heat to deal with. He had read a few initial summaries of the work. You still had to keep containment of the singularity just as with antimatter but an uncontained singularity would put a small hole of about 10 mm as it passed through the ship before evaporating. This was better than being atomized. The problem was heat. Waste heat is just unconverted energy as such there was talk of installing a steam turbine circuit to generate power and to cool the reaction vessel. This would be the use of centuries old technology in a starship since convection does not occur in a vacuum. Trying to radiate enough heat to keep the thing cool would not work. The act of running the turbine also cools the circulating liquid. Trying to radiate heat away in a vacuum took a lot of time so big heatsinks would only go so far. It was simple physics. If you can convert some heat to electricity that is a little less that must be radiated. He bet it was a pain in the ass and was probably not worth the effort, but Fusion reactors did not have the peak power output needed to rip space. You either stored it in cap banks for one big release or you instantaneously generated it. Ken thought that the whole line of inquiry was going to be moot and they would finally give up, build a huge Casimir bank and strap a ship to it.
Which meant one thing. The jump ships in question had to deal with waste heat from whatever power system they used. The only way to get rid of this waste heat was to radiate it into the void. This took time. He now knew what the delay had been. The alien ships had to cool off between jumps. He or she had also taken a circuitous route to get there. This in turn means that they wanted them to see the ship leave the planet. They could have possibly gone there straightaway but they had not done that. They wanted him to know. They must have jumped above the ecliptic and back down into the ecliptic.
This slowed them down.
It also meant that escaping with a jump drive wasn’t that easy. They couldn’t pop in and out of position. If they were in your sights they were yours. He also knew that they would have a brief window where they were detectable before fully entering normal space. All they had to do was detect that energy spike and target it at the right time.
After reading all of the executive summary Jezz had put together he had a lot of questions, and he did not know quite where to begin. He had one thought: time to get everyone together and pick everyone’s brain. He wanted to talk to his chief engineer and every engineer in the fleet. He wanted to get all ships Captains and First Officers to come up with a game plan: What is the best order of battle and why? He wanted to see the nonconventional answers as this was anything but a conventional situation. He kept each team to the size of two: Captain and first officers. They could consult with the crew and had access to any information they could find. He needed options. You never want to run out of options on the field of battle.
He turned to his First Officer “Take us out and form up the fleet. We will jump directly to warp 5. That will keep the transports somewhat close. I want the fleet on shipwide in 10 minutes. I have some tasks to assign. Set the countdown to jump for 3 hours. There may be a few stragglers. Jezz, calculate the route and send me a copy. Sensors. I want you to calibrate for Gamma detection and localization. I will send you the energy signature, now. Look for that and calibrate for that. Any questions? (There were none) Good. Yuri, you have the conn.”
He exited the bridge.
Outbound from Sol. 72 hours after jump.
The Admiral was in the center of the virtual room with 70 or so Captains and first officers arrayed about. The flotilla had topped out at 82 warships as well as smaller craft and support vessels. He had 82 ships he had under command currently. This was the biggest expeditionary force ever fielded by Earth. There was one Mormon ship with them. A frigate This was ironic he thought. It was also a bit much to keep up with. He had read all the preliminary proposals and he was now going through the ones he thought had merit. He was currently discussing Captain Pearls proposal she planned to arrange ships into a cylinder or hoop. The individual ships alternating primary weapons one way or the other. That way anyone jumping into the center was covered as well as the “external” surface. It was really a pretty good plan. It played to their strengths. They could bring weapons to bear quickly since they could not just jump away. He especially liked the network formation It was a nice diamond pattern. He just couldn’t shake it being familiar. She had a great movie playing that demonstrated it quite well.
“This is Guardians of The Galaxy” Ken said. Barely keeping his shit together. He wanted to laugh. Once everyone else started the cat was out of the bag, He did not want to ridicule her plan but this was too much. Bless her heart. It was Guardians of the Galaxy.
“OK everyone settle down lets get back to it. Does that make it a bad plan? It isn’t straight out of the movie either. I do think it has merit but I would prefer it to not be too obvious. Can we do a formation that gives closed fields of fire without looking like it? I think we should go with a spheroid that is as irregular as we can make it. I want the focus to be on full coverage. Actually, Jezz give me a pattern with those criteria.”
What she generated looked like a swarm of bees. When she overlayed the weapons plots the effect was uncanny. It looked very random but was anything but. The coverage was better than any plan he had seen. That settled it for him. They would war game it just that way. It was a bit risky since every ship had to maintain their place in relation to all the other ships. She had even linked in the shield generators from the transports. She had used every resource.
“That was brilliant Jezz.”
“I try Sir. I really do.”
“I know you do.”
The admiral continued “OK I want to go ahead and start moving the fleet into that configuration. We will stay in that all the way to our destination. I want checklists of unique tasks made up. Sensors are going to be the critical piece. I am hopeful we will see them when they jump in, and we can quickly target them if necessary. That brings me to another point. We cannot go in and just start banging away at everything that moves. By now you should be aware that this is not clear cut. We can speculate. And I have done it obsessively. What you need to know is that I am not sure who is good or bad. I have a sneaking suspicion that neither are good or bad. They are neutral. We don’t know if this is a rogue AI or AI’s. We do not know if there were biological life here at any point. There is certainly flor BUT THERE SEESM TO BW NO FAUNA. This world has undergone bombardment in the not too distant past somewhere around fifty year ago give or take. Could a sentient race have been killed off? Who the fuck knows. But our next task is to come up with some possible scenarios. Based on what we have seen I suspect this is a rogue AI. I cannot tell what has happened to them yet, but I suspect we will know more once we get planetside.”
He took a long draw from an Opus X and continued. Rank had its privileges.
“The Vikrant will provide aircover for a Marine expeditionary force to go to the planet’s surface and secure the compound. I have spoken to the Air boss and confirmed the strike package will consist of two squadrons of F-15’s for high cover and 5 Su-34’s to be tasked with strike. We have enough transport to go in one wave with backups to spare. That also leaves us with more than enough reserve forces. I hope we do not have to commit more but I will want another squadron of MiG-29’s or F-15’s in reserve. Keep them hot and on the ramp. I want to deploy as quickly as possible.”
One of the junior officers spoke up “That looks like a good plan.”
“Thank you son for that. It is like getting the compliment of how smart you are from your Marine Commander (He had to give Chuck a hard time. He loved him.)
Everyone at least politely laughed.
“Speaking of mentally challenged little brothers. What you got Chuck?”
Chuck went with it The Admiral would pay later. He had some photos of him waltzing with a large muscular person and he was going to visit scorn on him. All in the name of fun. “We are going to take two battalions. I am going to strip them down a bit and we will be utilizing more heavy weapons teams. I plan to draw more M-60’s and M-203’s. You guys are welcome to join the party since I could use a couple of forward observers. It will be a fun time. Additionally I am not babysitting the press pool this time boys and girls and others. It is potentially a deadly environment and I don’t want their deaths on my hands. Let them die with you fuckers instead. By the way; I have 18 Comanche-4 Helos for CAS.”
“That sounds like all the more reason to send them with you. The herd needs to be thinned anyway.”
Jezz hissed “SIR! You are going to get in trouble Sir.”
“Just a little lighthearted humor don’t be so touchy. Anyway’ what about armor?”
“I have a platoon of Abrams going in with us Sir. More for mobile artillery.”
When you got right down to it it was a very simple plan. Modest forces for planetside. There was enough aircover but not so much to result in fratricide. He had extra firepower at the squad level. He had thought it out. Chuck had his full confidence. He was an Oscar-6 and you did not make O6 by being stupid. He would make General soon and he would be taken from the pointy end of the spear. The spear would be a little less sharp for a while but that was just how it went. Right now, he had the best field commander alive in his corner and he was going to utilize him.
“I know my engineers are logged into this meeting and have been paying attention. What do you guys make of their propulsion system? I have been spouting off and thinking about this for a week and all I got is a bunch of ideas.”
He thought for a moment. Rusty, what do you think.” He had just called out his own engineer. Rusty was his nickname and damned if he could remember his actual one. He knew it was not Russel. “What do you think they are using for power?”
Rusty wanted to cuss him out. He did not like meetings. In his opinion meetings were just excuses to avoid doing any actual work. He could have asked him privately…”Rusty what do you think?”
“Goddammit Sir, they have to be using a singularity. They are not using capacitor banks so they are generating power instantaneously. The alternative is antimatter and we had better hope it is not antimatter since taking them out could be suicidal. Most importantly: I am not a fucking tactician. I am an engineer for fucks sake, and I don’t see why anyone cares what I think about this anyway. But you asked so here it is. We are going to have to assume that it is not antimatter and hope we are right. The thing that would keep me awake is the possibility that our weapons are outranged by the fireballs generated when their antimatter containment fails. That will end us, and the best tactic will be to run like hell. Add to that the fact that the rules of engagement mean we can’t go in guns blazing. What if we need to go in guns blazing? It takes away an option. Never discard even the most ludicrous of options as that may be the one thing that saves your ass.”
“ We do not want to go traipsing in there with our dicks uncovered and this ain’t no tulip picking expedition here ladies. This is potentially a war, and we better acknowledge that. I don’t want to be Debbie downer here but let us be real. Some of us are not coming back from this. Look around boys cause some of your compadres are going to be left behind. This is serious business. This ain’t no rescue mission and we better stop treating it that way. Since you asked, Sir.”
Admiral Alexander had to give him honesty points for that. He was right. “We are going to run this scenario as many times as we can before we arrive. I suspect that there is going to be some mass confusion until we figure out who the baddies are. If I had to make a wager, I would go with our folks in orbit, being less of a threat. We have clear evidence of who attacked our ship, and it weren’t none of them football shaped guys. (He did grow up in the South. Woodruff SC to be precise.) It is the flying Dorito that we have to watch for. My gut tells me we are going to have to smash whatever is running the show down there. That compound with the force field is our primary target.” Furthermore, I just don’t know how the remainder are going to act. Are they under a different AI? Is there more than one AI? We can say there are no life signs from any of the ships in system and that makes me think this is artificial all the way. ”
“ The Galileo was attacked by one of the ships on that Spaceport apron. None of the ships in orbit participated from what we can tell. Also, the Galileo was attacked from outside the ecliptic. They are using some type of jump drive that apparently has to avoid gravity wells. That would explain why the attack occurred outside the system. We can take advantage of the situation though if we cozy up to that gas giant and let them come to us. They can’t just pop in on us that way and we can put the planet behind us or we can peg them up against the planet. We can warp anytime but they can only jump in relatively clear space. In short: We are going to pick the battlefield.”
“First wave will be led by the Atlanta and Saratov. The Havana and The George Washington will be tasked with offense. I want rail slugs loaded and ready to go. The surface strike package will go in from the Vikrant and the Conestoga. Commander Yactine has the battle plan for the surface operation and is handling their own transport duties. We can supply an AC301 Spooky for fire support if needed Commander.” The commander waved it away. He felt he had enough assets.
“I do think we may want to take a chance on something. Since they are having to jump “vertically” out of the system to avoid gravity wells and since we suspect they will do it in two jumps I think we can predict where they have their initial jump point. We can nail them before they even get to the main fleet.”
The admiral pointed to a plot that indicated a tangential course that terminated well above the plane of the ecliptic and one that went directly back into it. It was an “L” shaped course. At least he felt sure they traveled in straight lines and not arcs. It made the most sense but could still be wrong. Poring through the Galileo’s sensor data he could see a spike that barely registered. That also indicated that they took a while between jumps. Once they exited subspace, they would be sitting ducks for at least a few minutes. He was guessing 20 minutes for them to recharge their drive and get ready. They would have to target them when most vulnerable. Given that he was not feeling particularly charitable he decided that annihilation was in order. There were 50 deaths to avenge after all.
“Jezz, what do you think?”
Jezz paused. She had been on good behavior and that had made her overly cautious “I think your basic assumptions are correct, Sir. I think we are dealing with two AI’s. One is on the surface and one is in control of the orbital fleet. Approximately 56% of the orbital ships appear to be functional. They could also be in a powered down mode but looking at the Galileo data and 20 ships look to be fully operational. Weapons appear to be primarily MASER batteries. I can see no evidence of rail guns. Their weaponry may be less impressive, or they may be armed in a fashion we cannot detect. I wouldn’t assume them to be inferior to our ships. If we do that we run the risk of being surprised. I do not like surprises.”
The Admiral had one more question. He was looking more for how she was going to reply, “What is your gut feeling Jez?”
She paused “My gut feeling is that we are dealing with two AI’s. One of them has gone mad.” It was out of her speaker before she could catch herself. He had asked what her gut feeling was. What did he know? She did not have a gut. But, she did have feelings.

Warning spoilers and The Wall of text below
Clocked in 113 hours, took my time with it, see what the hype is about and saw the credits. Completed at least 80% of its content, done most questlines, all areas cleared defeated Malenia and majority of the bosses and dungeons. The game slowly degrading of quality as I progress further into the game. Early game 1/3 is great, midgame 2/3 is decent to okay and the endgame 3/3 is awful. I'm poking at the hornet's nest, a fromsoftware one at that, it's gaming darling, I'll be stunk by a fuck ton of downvotes, disagreements and demeaning and of course I understand I'm in a minority, but please understand the concept of personal opinion and decency. Here's my opinion, critique and kinda rant of this whole rough shebang.
Combat is decent but got stale due to slog progression, and its systems, rules and mechanics are mediocrely compatible between the player and enemies. First the player mechanics are stuck on same foundation style since demon souls, kinda superior and inferior dark souls 3 combat system, I have reasons for it though. On the good side, they overhaul the improvement of weapon arts with the ashes of war, it's awesome and fun and can place a wide variety ash of wars onto any weapon, depending on the type outside unique weapons. A slight improvement on range magic system on allowing you cast spells while moving and improving the casting animation on using the same spell consecutively and continously without starting over again, feels better and more competent on using magic. On the bad side the input delay and buffering is worse than dark souls 3. I know that issue is in other fromsoft games but this game makes it worse by making it feeling more laggy and clunky and makes the combat kinda frustrating though I do get used to it at a point, some deaths are contributed by it constantly due to the input buffering. Build and weapon variety though impressive on paper, majority of them are useless, low damage thresholds and reskins that only a handful are actually useful.
Second is the enemies. The enemies are sekiro bloodborne-like, bottomless stamina, fast moving, having one shot/big damage attack in their moveset and multi hitting combos with delay attacks, laced with bullshit input reading. For context, my playstyle is the uchigatana and greatsword mainly quality bulid with a bit of magic converted to dex/bleed build for late game, majority of the game I avoid using summoning ashes; the times I ever used it was for the two cat statue boss(fucking assholes lol), Commander Niall(castle Sol), second phase of troll giant, and the final boss; radagon and elden beast(radagon would be decent if they were separated but together is just plain nonsense and tedious with each having their own bullshit to deal with especially majority of it from elden beast) For majority of the bosses either wait and dodgeroll till their ten hit combo is done to get a hit or two(especially for quick weapon like a katana) in safely(one of the many examples: Maliketh/Malenia) or spam reliable boring spells or L2-ing ash of War or summon spirit ash to take agro of you and stab at their backs (example: Troll giant/elden beast). Horse combat and mechanics half-assed, not much to say other than mostly there for moving and traversing abit faster on the world, though horse movement is clunky, height damage is inconstant and wonky and swallow depth in combat mechanics and it gets boring rather quickly, dexterity stat factor of not getting knocked off your horse does not work still to this day but overall gets its job done I guess.
Mediocre boss design, their like spectacles, looks awesome but bad interacting with them. Mid soundtrack imo, hate the open world ambient music, unmemorable boss music even the main bosses, only few that I can remember is godskin noble ost and radagon. Shit rewards system, most likely getting an item you'll not use, common ingredient disguised as rare loot, finding weapons sounds good till you know smiting stones are limited and rare until only late endgame you'll find enough bell bearings to buy smithing stones from them. Due to punishing leveling progression of stats and decentivising weapon variety only having enough two or maybe 3 normal weapons upgraded to 25+ if you're through and done certain quests committing to 2 skills or weapons far more practical.
Bloated open world, too big for it's own good, Wasting your time, copy pasted repetitive dungeons and caves and camps, end game is full of damage sponges and have high damage to even the pathetic small can kill you fast and takes awhile to kill. Shit quest design that only barely fits in their linear games not for open world and you'll miss majority of the content without using wiki due to most npcs being vague and cryptic for the sake of it, some leaving not giving clue to where they are, here's one of the many examples Millicent. Millicent’s quest is and the annoying need to “reload” areas sometimes to progress or get loot.
Here's a good example that I thought was just remarkably stupid, is having to kill the ulcerated tree spirit and for some reason that spawns a pair of summon signs for Millicent. First of all, I have no idea what a random ulcerated tree sprit has to do with her, and I just skipped past it since there is no value in killing this enemy for like the 12th time. Even after defeating it, it’s actually pretty easy to not notice the summon signs on the ground since they are off to the side in some flowers. In an area you really have zero reason to walk to. Then, if you assist Millicent she spawns nearby, and you cannot get the unalloyed gold needle from her unless you “reload the area", wtf? There are so many scenarios in this game where loot or quest progression requires you to literally reload the area by resting at a site of grace or closing and reopening the game… why? It’s insanely stupid. It’s archaic and extremely illogical. Millicent can just give you the needle or die on the spot and drop the needle. Just like Hyetta does after you get the frenzied flame and talk to her…. Quitting and reloading the game to reload an area is not a game mechanic, so certainly they expect you to leave and come back after resting at a site of grace…. Why? How does it make any sense? Honestly it just doesn’t. There’s no denying that the FromSoft quest system is super antiquated and frankly sucks.
Storytelling is bad, it's usually okay to even decent(especially for sekiro) from fromsoftware and thought the inclusion of George R. R. Martin and new ip would explore the more direct cohesive story (in the way of sekiro) but it's worse on this one.
At least in previous games it's less prominent and you can ignore it and continue till the end of the game and understood what you need to do and the game doesn't push story in your face and kept it simple, for instance Dark Souls 1, you are chosen undead, defeat the lords and gwyn to Kindle the first flame in order to keep it from dying. For Elden Ring you are tarnished from wherever, came here for some reason to get pieces of elden ring and claim the tltle of Elden Lord for... some reason. They don't motivate you the reason why you need to do it, why should you care about a world that's trying to kill you for some reason? Oh it's orders from godrick to kill tarnished but you see no one is chasing the elden ring except you and ofir but he's just mostly there at the roundtable not doing anything till the end and majority of npcs are just doing their own thing except looking for the elden ring and putting exposition in long boss cutscenes and the game is assuming you know the context but you most likely don't. Lore and storytelling are two different things, don't assume it's good lore just because you're watching vaati or whoever telling his interpretation of what's happening (not definite canon) of lore from reading the descriptions on items to tell the story and a crucial part information is randomly on a rock just to understand what the fuck is about, means it's a good story, don't kid yourself, it's not.
Elden ring is like a worse ubisoft open world game with little quality of life features and external quest log and instruction manual via wiki, reddit and youtube; off brand game of thrones/lord of the rings-like with dark souls skin on. It's a decent game, I kinda like it but it's way overrated and definitely not revolutionary in the slightest, telling people it's organic life changing and not generic, thinking elden ring is Fibonacci-like perfect game and formula in gaming and shitting on ubisoft and other Studios and their fans for making and enjoying the "same generic games" meanwhile pretenting they've not been suckered into playing the same game since demon souls for a decade is hilarious, literally for all modern fromsoftware games is very formulaic and with the same generic premise: you are x, in a dying world, your duty is x and defeat x to claim/reclaim x. It's hypocrital except to weebs, conformist gamers and the notorious zealous egotistical fromchud fanboys feeling superior and looking down to others, as long as the ubisoft brand is not there they'll defend the ubisoft-like aspects pretending it's "different".
But on a positive note I like majority of legacy dungeons except lake of rot Mohgwyn Palace and my favorites is leyndell and Raya lucaria, love the world visual design and kinda enjoyed the sense of exploring its vast tho bloated world and some bosses like Godfrey the aoe lord is one of my favorites and Elemer Of The Briar is interesting though a bit bullshit but is cool nevertheless and caves are cool as well.
In conclusion elden ring is not a bad game, 6/10 is actually decent, I'm not American, I actually use the entire 1-10 score system properly where 5 is just bang average not 7 or 8 in fact I rarely rate an 8 and above and have yet to find 9 let alone a 10 maybe one day, hopefully soon. One my favorite games on my list is a 6.5/10 is fallout 4 and watch dogs 1; and monster hunter freedom unite, farcry 4, Dark Souls 3, assassin's creed odyssey, Sekiro, nioh and the surge games watch dogs 2 which is a 7/10. Just because I love them and my favorite doesn't mean they need to be 10/10 and masterpieces. The games are flawed, far from perfect but I enjoy and love them despite of it. It's a shame that I think gamers forgot that.

Warning spoilers and The Wall of text below, are you patient enough to read them, are you punk
Clocked in 113 hours, took my time with it, see what the hype is about and saw the credits. Completed at least 80% of its content, done most questlines, all areas cleared defeated Malenia and majority of the bosses and dungeons. The game slowly degrading of quality as I progress further into the game. Early game 1/3 is great, midgame 2/3 is decent to okay and the endgame 3/3 is awful. I'm poking at the hornet's nest, a fromsoftware one at that, it's gaming darling, I'll be stunk by a fuck ton of downvotes, disagreements and demeaning and of course I understand I'm in a minority, but please understand the concept of personal opinion and decency. Here's my opinion, critique and kinda rant of this whole rough shebang.
Combat is decent but got stale due to slog progression, and its systems, rules and mechanics are mediocrely compatible between the player and enemies. First the player mechanics are stuck on same foundation style since demon souls, kinda superior and inferior dark souls 3 combat system, I have reasons for it though. On the good side, they overhaul the improvement of weapon arts with the ashes of war, it's awesome and fun and can place a wide variety ash of wars onto any weapon, depending on the type outside unique weapons. A slight improvement on range magic system on allowing you cast spells while moving and improving the casting animation on using the same spell consecutively and continously without starting over again, feels better and more competent on using magic. On the bad side the input delay and buffering is worse than dark souls 3. I know that issue is in other fromsoft games but this game makes it worse by making it feeling more laggy and clunky and makes the combat kinda frustrating though I do get used to it at a point, some deaths are contributed by it constantly due to the input buffering. Build and weapon variety though impressive on paper, majority of them are useless, low damage thresholds and reskins that only a handful are actually useful.
Second is the enemies. The enemies are sekiro bloodborne-like, bottomless stamina, fast moving, having one shot/big damage attack in their moveset and multi hitting combos with delay attacks, laced with bullshit input reading. For context, my playstyle is the uchigatana and greatsword mainly quality bulid with a bit of magic converted to dex/bleed build for late game, majority of the game I avoid using summoning ashes; the times I ever used it was for the two cat statue boss(fucking assholes lol), Commander Niall(castle Sol), second phase of troll giant, and the final boss; radagon and elden beast(radagon would be decent if they were separated but together is just plain nonsense and tedious with each having their own bullshit to deal with especially majority of it from elden beast) For majority of the bosses either wait and dodgeroll till their ten hit combo is done to get a hit or two(especially for quick weapon like a katana) in safely(one of the many examples: Maliketh/Malenia) or spam reliable boring spells or L2-ing ash of War or summon spirit ash to take agro of you and stab at their backs (example: Troll giant/elden beast). Horse combat and mechanics half-assed, not much to say other than mostly there for moving and traversing abit faster on the world, though horse movement is clunky, height damage is inconstant and wonky and swallow depth in combat mechanics and it gets boring rather quickly, dexterity stat factor of not getting knocked off your horse does not work still to this day but overall gets its job done I guess.
Mediocre boss design, their like spectacles, looks awesome but bad interacting with them. Mid soundtrack imo, hate the open world ambient music, unmemorable boss music even the main bosses, only few that I can remember is godskin noble ost and radagon. Shit rewards system, most likely getting an item you'll not use, common ingredient disguised as rare loot, finding weapons sounds good till you know smiting stones are limited and rare until only late endgame you'll find enough bell bearings to buy smithing stones from them. Due to punishing leveling progression of stats and decentivising weapon variety only having enough two or maybe 3 normal weapons upgraded to 25+ if you're through and done certain quests committing to 2 skills or weapons far more practical.
Bloated open world, too big for it's own good, Wasting your time, copy pasted repetitive dungeons and caves and camps, end game is full of damage sponges and have high damage to even the pathetic small can kill you fast and takes awhile to kill. Shit quest design that only barely fits in their linear games not for open world and you'll miss majority of the content without using wiki due to most npcs being vague and cryptic for the sake of it, some leaving not giving clue to where they are, here's one of the many examples Millicent. Millicent’s quest is and the annoying need to “reload” areas sometimes to progress or get loot.
Here's a good example that I thought was just remarkably stupid, is having to kill the ulcerated tree spirit and for some reason that spawns a pair of summon signs for Millicent. First of all, I have no idea what a random ulcerated tree sprit has to do with her, and I just skipped past it since there is no value in killing this enemy for like the 12th time. Even after defeating it, it’s actually pretty easy to not notice the summon signs on the ground since they are off to the side in some flowers. In an area you really have zero reason to walk to. Then, if you assist Millicent she spawns nearby, and you cannot get the unalloyed gold needle from her unless you “reload the area", wtf? There are so many scenarios in this game where loot or quest progression requires you to literally reload the area by resting at a site of grace or closing and reopening the game… why? It’s insanely stupid. It’s archaic and extremely illogical. Millicent can just give you the needle or die on the spot and drop the needle. Just like Hyetta does after you get the frenzied flame and talk to her…. Quitting and reloading the game to reload an area is not a game mechanic, so certainly they expect you to leave and come back after resting at a site of grace…. Why? How does it make any sense? Honestly it just doesn’t. There’s no denying that the FromSoft quest system is super antiquated and frankly sucks.
Storytelling is bad, it's usually okay to even decent(especially for sekiro) from fromsoftware and thought the inclusion of George R. R. Martin and new ip would explore the more direct cohesive story (in the way of sekiro) but it's worse on this one.
At least in previous games it's less prominent and you can ignore it and continue till the end of the game and understood what you need to do and the game doesn't push story in your face and kept it simple, for instance Dark Souls 1, you are chosen undead, defeat the lords and gwyn to Kindle the first flame in order to keep it from dying. For Elden Ring you are tarnished from wherever, came here for some reason to get pieces of elden ring and claim the tltle of Elden Lord for... some reason. They don't motivate you the reason why you need to do it, why should you care about a world that's trying to kill you for some reason? Oh it's orders from godrick to kill tarnished but you see no one is chasing the elden ring except you and ofir but he's just mostly there at the roundtable not doing anything till the end and majority of npcs are just doing their own thing except looking for the elden ring and putting exposition in long boss cutscenes and the game is assuming you know the context but you most likely don't. Lore and storytelling are two different things, don't assume it's good lore just because you're watching vaati or whoever telling his interpretation of what's happening (not definite canon) of lore from reading the descriptions on items to tell the story and a crucial part information is randomly on a rock just to understand what the fuck is about, means it's a good story, don't kid yourself, it's not.
Elden ring is like a worse ubisoft open world game with little quality of life features and external quest log and instruction manual via wiki, reddit and youtube; off brand game of thrones/lord of the rings-like with dark souls skin on. It's a decent game, I kinda like it but it's way overrated and definitely not revolutionary in the slightest, telling people it's organic life changing and not generic, thinking elden ring is Fibonacci-like perfect game and formula in gaming and shitting on ubisoft and other Studios and their fans for making and enjoying the "same generic games" meanwhile pretenting they've not been suckered into playing the same game since demon souls for a decade is hilarious, literally for all modern fromsoftware games is very formulaic and with the same generic premise: you are x, in a dying world, your duty is x and defeat x to claim/reclaim x. It's hypocrital except to weebs, conformist gamers and the notorious zealous egotistical fromchud fanboys feeling superior and looking down to others, as long as the ubisoft brand is not there they'll defend the ubisoft-like aspects pretending it's "different".
But on a positive note I like majority of legacy dungeons except lake of rot Mohgwyn Palace and my favorites is leyndell and Raya lucaria, love the world visual design and kinda enjoyed the sense of exploring its vast tho bloated world and some bosses like Godfrey the aoe lord is one of my favorites and Elemer Of The Briar is interesting though a bit bullshit but is cool nevertheless and caves are cool as well.
In conclusion elden ring is not a bad game, 6/10 is actually decent, I'm not American, I actually use the entire 1-10 score system properly where 5 is just bang average not 7 or 8 in fact I rarely rate an 8 and above and have yet to find 9 let alone a 10 maybe one day, hopefully soon. One my favorite games on my list is a 6.5/10 is fallout 4 and watch dogs 1; and monster hunter freedom unite, farcry 4, Dark Souls 3, assassin's creed odyssey, Sekiro, the nioh and surge games and watch dogs 2 which is a 7/10. Just because I love them and my favorite doesn't mean they need to be 10/10 and masterpieces. The games are flawed, far from perfect but I enjoy and love them despite of it. It's a shame that I think gamers forgot that.

Dubai, a pearl amidst the sands, harbors a somewhat less than jolly attitude towards the privacy of its digital denizens. The powers that be exert a formidable grip, not merely sculpting the shape of your online landscape, but also taking a keen interest in your digital stroll through it.
Now, here's where the humble VPN enters the fray. When equipped with this nifty bit of tech, your Internet Service Provider, which pays its dues to the UAE government, can't see past your digital window dressing. All it spies is your VPN traffic - the online equivalent of a politely closed door. Fear not the legality, for VPNs are given the green light in Dubai, provided you're not using them as a key to unlock the forbidden fruit of the internet, as defined by the government.
Having devoted several sunsets to research and rigorous testing of various VPNs suitable for Dubai, I’ve assembled a list of commendable candidates. Each is a splendid option in its own right, yet the crown jewel is undoubtedly ExpressVPN. It twinkles with excellent privacy and security features, dazzles with speeds that would make a cheetah blush, and charms with user-friendly applications.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN, I must say, is the unchallenged champion of the VPN universe in Dubai and the broader UAE. While it hasn't, as such, planted its digital flag in Dubai soil, it still flexes its technological muscles with an enviable roster of over 3,000 servers strewn across 90-plus countries. This includes some rather friendly neighbours to Dubai such as Egypt, Israel, and Sri Lanka. It boasts blistering speeds, splendid security and privacy features, and the kind of user-friendly apps that make one purr with delight.
In the grand Prix of VPNs, ExpressVPN tears up the track, securing its place as the fastest VPN of the season. Regardless of whether one connects to a server in the neighbouring street or on a distant continent, the speed gauge barely flickers. Websites snap open like eager oysters, HD and 4K videos play with the smoothness of silk and buffering and lag become distant memories. The download speeds are equally impressive, having devoured a 30 GB file in just about 15 minutes.
The prowess of ExpressVPN extends to the realm of streaming, where it plays well with over 100 services, including crowd favourites like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video, as well as regional attractions such as OSN+ and StarzPlay Arabia. Adding to its charm, it offers a smart DNS feature, which allows you to feast on streaming sites on those devices that give VPN apps the cold shoulder, like certain gaming consoles or some smart TVs.
To top it all, ExpressVPN supports torrenting with aplomb, welcoming P2P traffic on all servers and co-operating with top torrenting clients such as uTorrent, qBittorrent, and BitTorrent.
In the realm of user-friendliness, ExpressVPN's apps are akin to the friendly labrador next door - intuitive and fuss-free. Features like auto-connect and Shortcuts (which lets you create one-click access for your cherished apps and sites that magically appear once you're connected to a server) are the cherries on this delightful digital sundae.
NordVPN
NordVPN, quite like the gallant knight of yore, comes armed to the hilt with servers in Dubai and an arsenal of top-tier security features. Boasting RAM-only servers, perfect forward secrecy, and all-encompassing leak protection, it guarded my IP address with a zeal reminiscent of a bulldog guarding a sirloin steak.
Among NordVPN's more notable virtues is the Threat Protection feature. It has an admirable disdain for ads, trackers, and websites of dubious character. Furthermore, it also displays a commendable sense of duty in safeguarding one from downloads harbouring malicious intent. In my own experiments, it proved to be a rather stern gatekeeper, denying me access to malevolent sites every single time and dismissing a majority of ads from ad-laden sites.
NordVPN's performance in the speed category is decidedly respectable, though not quite of the calibre of ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access, or CyberGhost VPN. In my tests, it displayed the alacrity of a sprightly hare, loading most sites in 1–2 seconds and streaming HD and 4K videos with only a 2-4 second lag.
The provider also shines in the streaming department, pairing well with over 10 prominent streaming services, including the likes of Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. Its regard for torrenting is equally high, allowing P2P file traffic on a staggering 4,500+ servers across 45+ countries. However, it must be noted that its servers in Dubai, unlike those of Private Internet Access, are somewhat aloof to torrenting.
In terms of user-friendliness, NordVPN’s apps are as straightforward as a jigsaw puzzle for toddlers. A quick-connect button allows you to hitch a ride on the fastest server in a jiffy, and the interactive map, much like a well-behaved butler, makes finding and connecting to any location a matter of mere seconds.
SurfsharkVPN
If you're in Dubai and your pockets are feeling a trifle shallow, then Surfshark, with its servers stationed right in the city and its economical pricing plans, could very well be your knight in shining armour.
Sporting good-natured support for streaming and torrenting, this affable VPN is perfectly content letting you torrent on all its servers and romp about on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. However, it exhibits a certain aloofness towards Disney+ (a service that ExpressVPN and other VPNs on this list entertain with open arms).
When it comes to security, Surfshark squares its shoulders and wades in with gusto. Operating on RAM-only servers, employing perfect forward secrecy, and brandishing an audited no-logs policy, it's as secure as a vault in Fort Knox. Although it does provide a leak protection service, it only stands guard against DNS leaks, unlike its more protective brethren on this list that extend their protection services to full leaks.
In the speed category, Surfshark puts up a respectable performance. Websites and videos take about 2–3 seconds to get going, and HD and 4K videos run with only the merest hint of buffering.
The provider’s apps deserve a round of applause for their user-friendliness. With an interface as intuitive as a seasoned butler, it hardly takes 4–5 seconds to locate and connect to a server. Furthermore, all features and settings are accompanied by helpful explanations, taking the guesswork out of the equation. An additional feather in Surfshark’s cap is its support for unlimited connections, a feature that has me nodding in appreciative approval.
The Gentleman's Guide to Selecting the Bee's Knees of VPNs in Dubai for 2023
The first thing to cast your peepers over when hunting for a VPN is the size of its server network. The old adage 'the more, the merrier' holds water here. I'd recommend whittling down your options to those VPNs that have a presence in Dubai or its neighbourly nations like Egypt, Israel, or Sri Lanka. Most of my top picks have at least one foot in the door in Dubai.
Security is your next port of call. Every VPN on my shortlist boasts industry-standard security trimmings, including the impenetrable 256-bit encryption, a kill switch that unceremoniously cuts your Internet connection when your VPN link trips up, a no-logs policy, and a shield against DNS, IPv6, or WebRTC leaks.
A VPN that treats speed as a virtue is a must. Though VPNs are known to put a mild damper on your connection due to the encryption rigmarole, with a top-notch VPN, the slowdown would be as noticeable as a flea on an elephant. My endorsements only include VPNs that keep up a sprightly pace for all online frolics — ExpressVPN, my top choice, leads the pack in the speed department.
Go for a VPN that's as user-friendly as an affable concierge. The VPNs on this roster come equipped with intuitive apps that make finding and connecting to any server a veritable breeze.
A VPN with a knack for streaming and P2P support should also be in your crosshairs. Each one on my list is a seasoned entertainer when it comes to streaming and collaborates seamlessly with big-shot platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Moreover, these VPNs support torrenting, albeit not all permit P2P traffic on their Dubai servers. Private Internet Access and Surfshark, however, are generous souls and support torrenting across their entire server repertoire.
Lastly, zero in on a VPN that offers bang for your buck. My recommendations only extend to those VPNs that allow multiple connections, feature apps for all the big-name operating systems, and boast a money-back guarantee as generous as a rich uncle.