Notices by adiwan (adiwan), page 9

adiwan

Never thought my favorite game franchise gets a new game https://store.steampowered.com/app/1939890/Simon_the_Sorcerer_Origins/ It's a prequel. I guess since Simon The Sorcerer 3D it didn't recover from that catastrophe. Even the last two sequels were mid at best. 1 and 2 are still on the same level as Monkey Island 1 and 2 in my opinion.

adiwan

On the other hand Tigerella (red tomatoes with yellow-ish stripes) are not that bad and they pump out a lot but they are not my preferred taste with their very juicy and sour notes. If I prepared salads they would have been ideal for that. A Polish sort called Malina on the other hand was described as very sweet and juicy but in my garden they turned out to be dull in taste. The same with a sort called Japanese Crab (it's from Russia) that is not much of a shower in the flavor department. Marmande (from France) is still a very solid all-rounder that I don't mind for being mid in everything. Harzfeuer (German) is also mid but the fruits are a little bit too small for me. Roma tomatoes (Italy) are quite hard, almost like a soft bell pepper and have little juice which makes them eating on bread less desirable. Adora tomatoes that I tasted were also not bad but lacked the qualities it is advertised as with its smoky taste. For me it's a watered-down Black Krim atm.

adiwan

Got my first ripe Black Krim tomato. It was a little bit underwhelming. Maybe it's the sample size of 1 at the moment and the seeds I got did not have the best representatives of that kind. However I am now quite certain what to plant next year en masse: Tscherny Prinz (Black Prince) tomatoes. They taste similar but Tscherny Prinz are more intense in taste and buttery smooth in texture. I won't completely abstain from other sorts but I want to have at least half of what I plant to be Tscherny Prinz. Also I'm a little bit disappointed by most what I planted as they grow very slowly. Purple Sunrise tomatoes just started to get their color. Ananas Noire is still very green.

adiwan

Gathering tomato seeds from the fruits is quite tedious. It's all gooey and slippery. I used paper kitchen towels to accelerate the drying process. Selling the seeds I have left over would be an option but it's not worth the effort for 2-3€ per 15 seeds (average price on eBay) plus 1€ to send them via postal service. At least it's not worth my time. I'd rather do a 3d print service instead.

adiwan

Two friends of mine dare to fly to Disney World (Orlando) this September.

adiwan

As a DM I'm struggling hard creating satisfying roleplay moments. So far I used my NPCs to direct the players from place A to B to whack on enemies. I tried to do something, but my players were adamant going the most efficient and direct path. E.g. they skip encounters and don't make prisoners. I threw in moments to gather information but they didn't take the bait. I had to info dump them with a Harper they rescued who was investigating a dragon cult this session because I feared that they don't catch up otherwise. At the end of the session they took finally some prisoners who are leaders of the cult's cell.

adiwan

Beheading Karlach as Dark Urge in BG3 feels wrong. But I did it because he's a murder hobo.

adiwan

It's nice to have finally white miniature model paint. The Citadel tubs are dry as the desert and gone completely unusable. This time I bought Vallejo paint in those nifty eye drop bottles. Additionally I also got some other paint like yellow, because Army Painter's yellow was not opaque enough. The shop I've ordered from also added ball bearings that I can add for better shaking and mixing performance. Also got a few Vallejo synthetic detail brushes.

adiwan

Modeled a miniature holder myself https://i.imgur.com/xufhhPj.jpeg Minis without a big base are definitely problematic at the moment. I need to make extra vise jaws for low-profile bases. But that isn't a problem because I have the CAD model.

adiwan

Prime example is the ill-fated Bioware game "Jade Empire". It went down-hill making that in any way real-time with the turn-based combat system in the background.

adiwan

Turn-based combat is king. All those attempts to do a hybrid approach are failing in my opinion. I think Diablo has poisoned these games with the fancy real time hack and slash combat. I like D&D for intense strategy combat and not for the real-time hectic confusion. I have a party of 4 people against 5-10 enemies. I am too slow to even judge the situation and make a good decision.

adiwan

BG2 (enhanced edition) is rroooooough. The UI is abyssmal. I think whenever I try it again I'll install a UI mod to make it usable. I had some problems with BG3 with all the boxes and containers and the cumbersome context menu to send items to camp and party members, but BG2 is on a whole new level of awfulness. I get it was a product of its time but come on, it doesn't need much to improve things I noticed within the first minute.
Also I miss the turn-based order. This pseudo-realtime is bugging me a lot. KOTOR 1 did that better.

adiwan

I recently put on a very old piece of clothing that has been washed with scented detergent and it hit my nose really hard. For about 4 years I use detergent without any perfumes. My nose couldn't handle the stench of "freshness" companies try to sell to customers.

adiwan

It is delightful to see the Silksong reddit melting upon seeing pictures from Gamescon. Not the game, just the Silksong booth.

adiwan

My second BG3 run has been done. My female druid Dragonborn (Lizardfolk lookalike) Chamillia has romanced successfully Karlach and has done all but one quest. I missed the quest because I wasn't aware of a progression trigger for that and I was too much progressed to load an older save. I saved all Tieflings and none of them died until the end. I also played the end a few times to explore the possible endings. I consider the canon ending with Wyll, Karlach and my character adventuring together. With all of that it took me 95 hours at the easiest difficulty setting. The combat was less exciting but it was cool enough for some experimentation on my side.
Next run will be a murderhobo run where I try to kill everything that is alive, undead, or a construct, even the companions.

adiwan

It's funny to me that Larian, the developer of Baldur's Gate 3, has renamed the EULA as a Pact and added this fine section https://i.imgur.com/kyWHaJZ.png At least someone is behind my back whenever, in the rare occasion, I might mistakenly form a pact with a fey creature.

adiwan

This is me speaking about fashion options as a dude who wears almost exclusively graphic t-shirts and jeans (or sweat pants at home).

adiwan

In BG3 I am mildly bothered that female Dragonborn character's underwear cover the chest area. It looks strange to me. The way the chest area is covered by basically all the camp clothes doesn't look very fashionable. They all assume that there are mammaries, only flat. I had to remove the underwear and only wear the default camp clothes, which do not have any blouse or vest. I am dissatisfied by the clothing options in general. Either the clothes look like a sack of potatoes or they make the character look like a clown. Since I want to have achievements unlocked I can't have mods installed for more clothes.

adiwan

I have some gherkin plants but they grow too few fruits to make it viable to pickle them. Some are giant while other fruits are barely grown. I'd need thrice as many as I have now to have a good selection of mid-sized gherkins at a time and enough to make it worth the process to put them into the pickle jars. So far I have given them away or ate some myself. I'm not a fan of fresh gherkins but at least they are better in taste than store-bought.

adiwan

I wrote to my members of the European Parliament to vote against chat control. Mass surveillance is an anti-democratic tool that is ripe for abuse and is a path paved with good intentions that lead to fascism or to tyranny of the few who have bad intentions and access.

adiwan

I guess I have to extract the 3d models from the game and make them 3d-printable. First I have to paint the minis I have but it still bugs me that other major characters aren't available.

adiwan

I acquired all the official BG3 unpainted minis. Strangely there aren't any Minsc, Alfira, Voss, Gortash, Ketheric, Orin minis. Minsc I got from another release. The rest are pre-painted, expensive, and horrendous in quality. No thanks. Would like to SLA print them myself when I find the models.

adiwan

Yesterday I drove about 12 hours at 150km/h just to drive my mother to her mother, and then me driving back.

adiwan

Good news: I have found that the nearest gas station has an operating compressor to pump up the air in my tyres. Bad news: I had to drive all around the town to find one working and to find out that they haven't lost any air at all. Usually I have one that is always conveniently on my well-traversed routes that has a compressor but for whatever reason the this and other one have theirs broken. The nearest gas station is a little bit out of my way but at least I know now.