Patching the Game

First, let me say that I finally got around to installing the Mad God’s Cosmic Forge editing utility. If you have BaneEdit.exe running, then getting Mad God’s Cosmic Forge editing utility isn’t that much more difficult. In my case, I use a Mac so there’s a few prerequisites such as installing Wine. However, as I discovered, there were a few additional things required, which is why I made a small guide for getting BaneEdit.exe and Wine working on a Mac.

Once you get Wine installed and manage to get BaneEdit.exe working, you can use CosmicForgeU.exe which is located on a Google Drive. Then you just unrar the file and run it with:

bash-3.2$ wine CosmicForgeU.exe

You will see a setup menu where it will ask you for the game installation. Since the editor is made for Dos, you won’t see the typical BSD/Unix style directories. Instead, you’ll see stuff like C:\ or Z:\ drive. Your game installation ought to be under the Z:\ drive. My full path was:

/Applications/Wizardry 6.app/Contents/Resources/game

That is the only thing you will need to configure. If you use the wrong path, the editor won’t load properly and probably quit out on you, forcing you to go through the steps again. In essence though, the editor is searching for the main game files so that it can patch them properly. You might want to create a backup somewhere as well as have backups of your saved games just in case.

Once you get the editor running, the main thing you will want to do is apply some patches. The most important of these is for Attribute Bonus Generation. This one is reversible and mostly ditches all the low end rolls during the character creation process. I highly suggest this patch even though it’s labeled as a “cheat” unless you enjoy suffering through hours of getting bad rolls. But if you really want to create an ideal power fantasy type of party, this is your best option.

Mechanics

To really get a long term party you have to understand a few critical mechanics about the game, some bugs and aspects like how mana regeneration operates. I had discussed a few of these ideas in the past but want to summarize them here as a review.

• Strength and Carrying Capacity (CC) – The game has a “bug” where your Carrying Capacity is determined by your strength only at character creation time. If you don’t use the patch (labeled “Encumbrance” in the patch section of the utility), you will be stuck with that amount for the remainder of the game. If you have say a female Faerie character, you will then end up not being able to carry anything. And since Faeries have numerous gear restrictions, you might consider using a Faerie as a kind of mule character especially for things like quest items or potions as they might have extra bag space. However, Faeries also are penalized by an additional 1/3 CC penalty. So I suggest applying this patch to avoid dealing with this problem.
• Faeries, Vitality and Mana Regeneration – Mana Regeneration also is fixed in this game is determined by the class you start off with. That makes Priests and Mages by far the best classes that allow for pure Mana Regeneration. For most classes, you will only receive 1 point of mana regeneration as a basis. Lizardmen are the worst because they have a -1 mana regeneration penalty, which makes them effectively a race you want to avoid. On the other hand, Faeries receive a +1 mana regeneration bonus so combining one with a Mage, for instance, seems like a natural choice for the best regeneration. Likewise, Vitality (rather than Intelligence and Piety for some reason) also determines your Mana Regeneration. This means you will want your character to have as much Vitality at the start as possible. I believe you need at minimum 16 points of Vitality to receive this bonus. Faeries though have a very low starting Vitality at 6, which means you will need at least 10 dedicated points to get the best bonus possible. Note that you can modify the starting mana regeneration values through the utility but do so at your discretion.
• Best Class Mana Regeneration – As far as I can tell, the best classes for Mana Regeneration are Alchemists, Mages and Priests. Alchemist though will lack Magic regeneration, which will be important at later stages in the game for healing and dealing with Undead and Demons. Of course, Psionics have the best Mental regeneration but only have 2 points in the other spell schools. Bishops only get 3 points for Mental and Magic regeneration while the rest are at 1 point. So one idea in creating an ideal party is to start off with only Alchemists, Mages and/or Priests to get the best Mana Regeneration possible. This does pose a problem if you want to take a Bard, which almost is mandatory to survive the initial half of the game.
• Bards and the Lute – Bards are almost universally praised as a must-have as part of a starting line up. Unfortunately, the Bard like other non-pure magic classes, only receives 1 point of Mana Regeneration. You can offset some of this by taking a Faerie and attempting to have at least 16 points of Vitality. However, my major issue with the Faerie as a starting Bard is that their equipment limitation prevents them from using a lot of armor. Most likely, you’ll position this character in the back possibly in the 5th slot. However, enemies can still strike out at them, making them vulnerable especially with their low hit starting hit points.
  Also, if you choose to swap from say a Mage to a Bard at level 1, you will be missing the all important Lute. As far as I know, the Lute is a random drop that won’t appear until you encounter Miner or Major Dwarves, which comes roughly at the midpoint of the game and have a very low chance to drop this invaluable item. So other guides propose you will want to start with the Bard just to have this item. If you insist on having the most mana regeneration possible along with doing an immediate class change at the start, you will have to cheat and use a utility like BaneEdit.exe to give yourself this item. But this issue becomes a question of ethics than feasibility.
• Class Change to Ninja – Like the Bard, Ninjas have some very rare starting equipment that you won’t find until towards the start of the end game when you begin encountering Ninjas themselves. So unlike a Monk, who will most likely just use common Robes (U/L) and Sandals for armor, which are readily available and sold by Queequeg, the Ninja will be lacking in -3 points of armor which is pretty huge at the start. On the bright side, if you can survive a few levels, your armor will improve naturally where the main other penalty is the higher experience requirements. In that sense, you might consider a Faerie because of their natural -2 to armor at the start as well as having a natural base speed of 14, which can influence armor too. You won’t be able to use most equipment for a while though, not even robes nor sandals.
• Class Change to Samurai – Unlike the Bard and Ninja, the Samurai’s starting equipment can be purchased at Queequeg’s shop (namely the Katana and Wakizashi). Also, the Samurai only start with Robes (U/L) and Sandals, which makes them a lot easier and a good choice to swap early on from say a Mage.
• Dracons and their Breath Weapon – Dracons have an interesting small AoE ability that is like a black dragon’s acid breath. For a starting party, it might be tempting to pick one of these races up (like for a Ninja). However, this ability does not scale into the end game and you won’t be using it for long. So I think this race is a bit of a red herring to start.
• Psionic and the Shadow Cloak – Perhaps, the one remarkable thing about using a Psionic is that they have a Shadow Cloak that they cannot use. Only thieves, ninjas and bards can use this item oddly. In addition, there’s only one other known Shadow Cloak in the game that appears in the later stage of the early game. Because this item only supplies a -1 to armor, I don’t think it’s worth using nor having a Psionic taking a spare spot in the party.
• Automated Core Skill Leveling – As you level up, you will get a certain amount of skill points. I believe that a portion of this pool is automatically pre-allocated to the main skills for your class as long as that skill is under 50 points. For instance, a Ranger will automatically have points placed into Scouting. If you want to level specific skills, you should ensure that the class does not have a core skill that interferes in taking precedence for receiving points, especially useless skills like Scouting.
• Class Changes, Attributes and Hit Points – When you change classes, your attributes drop the minimum need for the new class, your race’s starting points while your hit point gains will only increase by 1 until you exceed your previous level. If you have a wide gap between classes in terms of levels, it may take sometime before seeing any significant gain in your life. This situation makes swapping to simple classes like a Fighter or Mage pointless. It’s better to swap from a simple class into an elite or mid-tier class rather than the other way around since your race will determine the other attributes. On the other hand, you will level quickly so besides the starting part of the game, you should be judicious in choosing when to swap classes. Altering several classes at the same time might feel exciting but you probably will want to reload to ensure that you can maximize the number of attributes, hit points and skill points you receive for the new level. If you do this at the same time as other classes, there’s a high likelihood that the other class may get the shaft and you’ll have to reload and get lucky.

The Party Composition

With some of the main mechanics established above, I would like to dive into the party creation.

• Male Rawulf Priest
• Male Felpurr Mage
• Male Faerie Alchemist
• Female Dwarf Priest
• Female Elf Mage
• Male Mook Mage

This initial party seems fairly easy to create. However, the only character that will retain his class for a while is the Mook Mage. But this group will be able to have some of the highest spell regeneration in the game. Compared to my previous “optimized” party, I ended up changing the Faerie from a Mage to an Alchemist with the intention of converting him into a Ninja. In turn, I swapped the Felpurr from the Alchemist role to a Mage with the intention of turning him into a Samurai. Note that I chose a Female Elf Mage but have no Bard. I will admit that this character will be swapping to a Bard at level one where I will give her a Lute (and maybe some Skulduggery since locking picking and trap disarmament sucks in this game). Otherwise, her max Mana Regeneration will not exceed 2 points for the rest of the game. If you’re more of a purist and don’t want any edits (outside of the patch parts), you can go with the Bard from the start and have slightly less Mana Regeneration.

The early class transition will look like this:

• Male Rawulf Priest -> Lord (lvl 1/2)
• Male Felpurr Mage -> Samurai (lvl 1/2)
• Faerie Male Alchemist -> Ninja (lvl 2)
• Female Dwarf Priest -> Valkyrie (lvl 1)
• Female Elf Mage -> Bard (lvl 1)
• Male Mook Mage (no change)

The only two that are pretty much a must-have in terms of the class change after the start of the game are the Bard and Valkyrie. I would suggest giving a few starting fights a shot before making the class switch to see how your survival is. Part of that will depend on your starting hit points. Before going into a deeper look into the timing of the class transition, I want to first examine the minimum attribute requirements for the classes to be able to make this switch possible.

Male Rawulf Priest -> Lord Requirements

The male Rawulf’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 8
• Int: 6
• Pie: 12
• Vit: 10
• Dex: 8
• Spd: 8
• Per: 10

The Lord class has one of the highest starting attribute requirements in the game. The Lord’s minimum attribute requirements are:

• Str: 12
• Int: 9
• Pie: 12
• Vit: 12
• Dex: 9
• Spd: 9
• Per: 14

The Rawulf is one of the better racial candidates to handle this early transition. But to move from Priest to Lord, you will need the following additions:

• +4 str
• +3 int
• +2 vit
• +1 dex
• +1 spd
• +4 per

+15 min points total.

With the utility, achieving this minimum is much easier. In my case, I had previously rolled a Rawulf Priest without the utility and scored 23 bonus starting points. It is possible but extremely rare. Also, it’s worth noting that you do not need to adjust anything for the Priest side of the class. While creating the Priest class, you should dump everything into Theology and pick up Bless and either Heal or Make Wounds. Since I suggest that the Female Dwarf Priest be the one to immediately change to Valkyrie, you might consider placing this character in the back either for healing, utility or minor offense depending on your starting hit points. Generally though, I think a basic Priest can perform decently especially with the attributes required for a Lord.

Male Felpurr Mage -> Samurai Requirements

A male Felpurr’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 7
• Int: 10
• Pie: 7
• Vit: 7
• Dex: 10
• Spd: 12
• Per: 10

The Samurai class also has fairly high requirements but has a reasonable match with a Felpurr’s base:

• Str: 12
• Int: 11
• Vit: 9
• Dex: 12
• Spd: 14
• Per: 8

The Mage class itself requires a 12 in Int, which is only a single point off from the Samurai. This puts the starting schema as:

• +5 for str
• +2 for int (mage)
• +2 for vit
• +2 for dex
• +2 for spd

+13 min points total

13 points isn’t impossible to achieve even with the base game. Since you would want as much mana regeneration as possible and more hit points, I suggest dump as many points into Vitality and the leftover points into Strength (mostly to deal with the CC bug if you don’t intend to patch the game). Also, I suggest dumping every skill point on creation into Thaumaturgy. In that manner, you’ll continue to accumulate some points as you level in your initial chosen spell schools. For that, I would suggest grabbing Energy Blast and Chilling Touch. You want to be able to cast Fireball and Iceball once they become available as well as have plenty of points to maximize your casts. Gear-wise, you’ll only be missing the starting Katana and Wakizashi. You probably can make a fast run to Queequeg and try to buy those weapons when you decide to swap classes. You will not be able to use the Sword of Striking found in the starting chest though.

One idea here is to rush to Queequeg’s before you swap classes and save near the door (or inside). Then reload/go back and forth outside until you can obtain the Katana and Wakizashi. If you can get those, then do the class swap. Otherwise, consider reaching level 2 before the class swap. You might even be able to obtain Magic Missile and start your Magic Pool development. But you might be careful in deciding whether to swap your Lord first or your Samurai. In this situation, I would probably go for the Lord because of how he can make use of the Sword of Striking immediately (unless you give it to the Valkyrie, which I honestly don’t recommend since she will already have a Quarterstaff, which functions equally well as the Spear except for 1 less point of damage)

Male Faerie Alchemist -> Ninja Requirements

A male Faerie’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 5
• Int: 11
• Pie: 6
• Vit: 6
• Dex: 10
• Spd: 14
• Per: 12

Becoming an Alchemist for a Faerie is quite easy as the Alchemist requirements are:

• Int: 13
• Dex: 13

The Ninja is perhaps one of the hardest starting classes to role as well as being a class that is spread somewhat thin as a starting character. But the minimal requirements are:

• Str: 12
• Int: 10
• Pie: 10
• Vit: 12
• Dex: 12
• Spd: 12

Surprisingly, this disparity actually makes the conversion from a starting male Faerie Alchemist into a Ninja difficult:

• +7 Str
• +2 Int (for alchemist)
• +4 Pie
• +6 Vit
• +3 Dex (for alchemist)

+22 min points total

With such high requirements, one might ask why? In my previous iteration of the party, I did a Felpurr Alchemist into a Ninja. So why the alteration especially with the various gear restrictions and penalties for a Faerie as well as a Ninja? The ultimate goal for this character is to go from a Ninja and move him into the role of a Bishop for the end game. In the previous game, my Faerie Mage ended up as a Ninja, which is still quite strong. But the idea of using a Faerie for a Ninja early on is practical: you have a natural starting bonus of -2 armor. Since you’re giving up your Ninja garb (without saved game modifications), you effectively are naked.

However, a Faerie’s exceptionally high base speed along with the starting armor bonus mitigate some of these issues. Once you start casting spells again, you’ll have excellent mana regeneration. Also, I mentioned that you might consider swapping into a Ninja at level 2. Since the Alchemist experience table is quite low, the idea here is that getting one early level before switching to a Ninja would help by racing your Alchemy skill and hopefully acquiring a level 2 spell like Blinding Flash or increasing your Earth pool with Itching Skin. That will get you a small head start since most of your points early on as a Ninja will automatically be placed into Ninjutsu (which can take a fair amount of time to level). If you want to push things, you might even consider getting to level 3 as an Alchemist and seeing if you can get some higher level spells like Stink Bomb by pushing your Alchemy. Because the attribute requirements are pretty high for this transition, you might be off a few to make the change. So this will be at your discretion and situation.

Female Dwarf Priest -> Valkyrie Requirements

A female dwarf’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 9
• Int: 6
• Pie: 10
• Vit: 12
• Dex: 7
• Spd: 7
• Per: 8

The Priest only requires a Piety of 12, which makes it easy to obtain for a Dwarf. Swapping from a Priest to Valkyrie is actually quite natural when you look at what’s needed here for a Valkyrie:

• Str: 10
• Pie: 11
• Vit: 11
• Dex: 10
• Spd: 11
• Per: 8

Thus, you will need:

• +1 Str
• +2 Pie
• +3 Dex
• +4 Spd

+10 min points total

With only that many points needed, you can dump everything else into Vitality then Strength to really maximize your spell regeneration, hit points and carrying capacity. Priests start with Robes (U/L), Sandals, a Quarterstaff and 3 Lt. Heal potions. Valkyries have more armor but still only have a Spear and Sandals. But the Quarterstaff itself only does one additional point of damage over the starting Spear and still allows the wielder to attack from the 4th slot on. So the transition won’t be as bad compared to a Samurai, which is why you can swap from level 1 here.

Also, because the Valkyrie’s core skill is the Pole & Staff, you’ll be leveling this up as you go. In turn, when you start off as a Priest, you will want to dump all your skill points into Theology and pick up Heal and Bless. Once your Rawulf switches to a Lord and becomes the main tank of the group, your Valkyrie’s secondary job will function as a healer and utility person firing off Bless spells in tougher fights. But you will also have a head start to work on Theology because of the early focus. The only rough spot will be Oratory initially, which is why you probably want to cast Bless periodically to keep Oratory from failing.

Each time you level, you should dump your remaining points into Theology. I think Valkyrie’s can access their magic from level 3 or 4. By that point, you should still be able to increase your base Magic and Mental pools as well as use some healing. Then you probably will want to pick up spells like Cure Lessor Cnd, Divine Trap and Dispel Undead as quickly as possible. Cure Poison to me is the holy grail for Priest spells, but that will take some time.

Gear-wise, I think Queequeg sells a Halberd, which will be your best weapon until you meet Smithy. Also, in having a Valkyrie, you can wait until you find the Stud-Cuir Bra +2 on the second floor if you want to save some gold. There are a few other key spots containing low level gear in the basement. You will be sharing some gear with your Lord character.

Female Elf Mage -> Bard Requirements

A female Elf’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 5
• Int: 10
• Pie: 10
• Vit: 7
• Dex: 9
• Spd: 9
• Per: 9

A Mage only needs an Int of 12. For a Bard though, you need:

• Int: 10
• Dex: 12
• Spd: 8
• Per: 12

With the following adjustments:

• +2 Int (for mage)
• +3 Per

5 min points total (or just 3 for a plain bard)

This makes a female Elf a natural choice for a Bard or a Mage transitioning into a Bard. I provide two options here to point out what is needed if you don’t mind manually adding the Lute to the Mage with BaneEdit.exe or if you’d prefer to remain pure. The other major downside about the swap is that you will lose all your initiative advantages because your speed will only be 9. Of everyone in the party, you want your Bard to dish out those Sleep spells as fast as possible. So it might be worth keeping the Bard class regardless (unless you decide to modify her even more).

If you decide to start with the Bard, you probably will want to boost her Vitality to 16, which means, you need 12 points minimum. Then you’ll probably want to give her as much Speed to start. For her starting skills, I would dump all spare points into Skulduggery. You will be leveling your Music skill all the time by using it exclusively until you get more confidence in the others in your party. While you can level Skulduggery through usage, you simply do not find enough opportunities in the game. And early on many doors and chests have tough traps and locks, so you’ll need all the help you can get. As a Bard, your starting weapon is a Sling, which sucks because you have limited ammo. Don’t bother putting any points into that because it’s a very weak weapon and you’re better off using a round to Hide in Shadows to build up your Ninjutsu when you have a chance. Instead, you’ll want to pick up a Buckler for a little extra defense and a Cutless or Rapier. Heck, go with both if you want to try your hand at dual wielding. But your primary focus for a long time will be Sleeping your foes.

If you choose to start her as a Mage, you should pick up Energy Blast and Chilling Touch to begin building up her Fire and Water spell pools. Also, you’ll want to dump everything into Thaumaturgy. You will level fairly quickly as a Bard but your Music skill might not exceed the 50 point amount to allow you to spread your leveling points more heavily into spells. Also, even if you decide to have a Ninja, you’ll probably want to make your Bard your primary lock picker. As you level early on, you’ll have to make some key choices in terms of dividing your skill points between Thaumaturgy and Skulduggery. I personally suggest just giving her 100 in Skulduggery because of how lame the lock picking system is in the game and be over it. Only do something different if you really want to experience a super hardcore grindfest.

In addition, the idea of taking a female Elf is that the long game will gradually transition her into a Valkyrie for the end game. I think if there were extra character slots (which I wish there was), I could try to shoehorn a second Elf into this party just because I like the idea of having a Ranger that can make use of the Elven Bow. Yes, this character can use the Elven Bow too but it seems redundant compared to the Maenad’s Lance, which is one of the best end game weapons.

Lastly, whether you want to start with a Mage or Bard really depends on how much QoL you want to give yourself vs the true grindfest you can suffer. The thing I’ve noticed in taking a Bard is that I didn’t switch classes again for sometime. The majority of the time, I either was using my Instruments (especially the Lute) and building up her Music skill or trying to Hide in Shadows to avoid damage. Spell regeneration didn’t seem to make as huge of an impact by the time my Bard was starting to cast more spells. Also, once you hit near the end game with the Forest, you’ll be resting multiple times consecutively because the spell drain will get very high while number of foes you encounter pile up. The only real mitigation in any of this is simply to build your spell pools into a ridiculous amount to have enough points and a variety of spells at your disposal. So it really depends on how you want to carve your experience here.

Male Mook Mage Requirements

A Male Mook starts with:

• Str: 10
• Int: 10
• Pie: 6
• Vit: 10
• Dex: 7
• Spd: 7
• Per: 9

While a Mage only needs an Int of 12 making your minimal requirements points a whopping 2. I don’t have another class to change into here because I think it’s better to keep at least one Mage pure until the mid game (level 13 or so). By that point, you should have more options and ideas of how this character can compliment your party. Compared to my previous party, the Male Mook Mage there was used to swap into the Samurai whereas the Faerie had been the Mage.

Using a Mook Mage though, you have better overall Vitality and Strength so you don’t have to put as many points into those attributes. On the other hand, you are much slower than a Faerie and more vulnerable due to not having the natural -2 AC bonus. You will have slightly more access to gear overall in the short term but nothing that is a real game changer. Theoretically, you could still take a Faerie Mage but I dislike the redundancy of having two Faeries in a single party. I think with my previous group, I had swapped the Faerie Mage into a Bishop and raced to push his Theology then eventually swapped to a Ninja for the end game. Since you won’t have a great dedicated healer until mid game possibly, you could plan to swap this character into a Bishop and much later into a Monk. You just won’t have as much regeneration nor AC until you become a Monk. If you go the Bishop route as the follow up class to the Mage, then the final class should either be a Ninja or Monk to avoid redundancy with a Samurai or Lord’s spells as well as gaining access to the prized Ninjutsu skill.

The Game Begins

Once you’re in the starter dungeon, you should race to grab the treasure from the two starter chests. The most important item will be the Sword of Striking. While it’s not the best weapon in the game, the +2 bonus to hit is a major upgrade over a Longsword or the Lord’s starting Broadsword. So this makes me believe that you should change your Rawulf Priest into a Lord immediately to take advantage of this starting weapon. The other major item to acquire is the Amulet of Life found in the opposite treasure chest. Most guides recommend selling this off because it’s only use is to revive dead characters (Resurrection). However, it sells for a lot of gold which means if you can get to Queequeg unscathed, you probably can buy most of your missing starter gear (minus the Lute if you decided to take a Mage rather than a starting Bard). I would try to beef up your Lord and Valkyrie immediately with armor. If you have spare gold, get the Halberd for the Valkyrie. But make sure you can purchase the Katana and Wakizashi for your Felpurr, regardless of swapping to a Samurai.

Your Mage won’t require much additional gear at this stage. You probably will want your Bard in the 5th slot so armor isn’t critical at this stage. There are a few items the Bard can use found in the towers so you’ll want to explore those and hopefully be able to disarm their traps to obtain those items. But don’t hit up the towers until you have some basic gear from Queequeg.

I would handle my first class changes immediately. So at minimal, I would do the Valkyrie, the Lord and possibly the Bard (if I decided to fudge things a little). Having the Lord and Valkyrie immediately means you can have two front line tanks, even though I would use the term “tank” very loosely since neither are well equipped at this stage. Thus, you can rush for Queequeg and try to obtain gear after selling off the Amulet of Life and any irrelevant starting gear from the Priest side. Once you have a few pieces of better armor, you should go back to the main castle level and stay near the curative fountains. There’s a better fountain on the upper level that heals and provides stamina. But at this stage, healing shouldn’t be a problem because of the low health pool. Instead, Stamina will be a bigger issue. Similarly, since you used more “pure” spellcasting classes at the start, your mana regeneration should be fairly quick. You might want to avoid resting for a while too.

Here, I would save the game and simply spin around to start getting random encounters. I would try a few out to test if my party can survive. Most enemies at this level won’t do too much damage but I would be wary of Rogues. Use your Bard’s Lute every single round on the largest group of enemies or the deadliest. When enemies are sleeping, you gain a huge hit and damage advantage. Also, you’ll be building up your Music skill.

My main concern are for those that have lower hit points, which is why you probably will want the Valkyrie temporarily in the 2nd or 3rd slot. Both Mages should cast as frequently as they can to build up their Oratory. You might be a little judicious about spending mana though and should monitor your regenerative abilities here. I would suggest if you see the Felpurr getting hammered hard, then it might be worth class swapping to a Samurai and helping out the melee. Your Faerie Alchemist probably would be the better choice to swap classes between the two early on but I would hold off until level 2 or 3 just to continue building up his Alchemy skill. But changing to a Ninja does mean your Faerie can serve as a potential tank because of his slightly higher natural armor. But Hiding in Shadows will be difficult to do reliably for a while. So in a large fight, focus on melee with the Ninja and Hide in Shadows when you know the others can finish off the remaining opponents.

Another recommendation I’ve read is to avoid the Basement level until level 5 or so. I think it’s because some of the foes are a lot tougher and come in bigger groups. The ones to watch out for are Brigands, Rogue Leaders, Tricksters and some Slimes. I think what I tend to do is grind the area near the starting fountain until about level 3 then make my way into the basement or upper castle floor. The upper floor might get frustrating because of all the locked doors. You can find keys to deal with some of them. I believe some keys can be found off random dead bodies of monsters like from Rogues. Others are relegated to quest items. However, you might want to keep a few to give to the Amazon vendor as a sacrifice later on to avoid problems. But they will take up some space.

Regarding early leveling or any leveling in this game: SAVE ALL THE TIME. I made it a habit to save after each successful combat. It’s not terribly difficult to do on these later versions since you don’t have to deal with a floppy disk. But you will want to save and keep a close eye on your experience points as you near gaining a level. The early stages are probably the worst because of how easy it is to get murdered by the wrong encounter. Also, you will want to save frequently to reload so that you can get more ideal stats as you level.

This will become even more important because of the class change and attribute reset. I would suggest that the minimum number of upgraded attributes per level, at least early on, should be between 3-4. Prioritize speed and vitality since you gain more AC, initiative and hit points. Dexterity helps in this regard too but I would put that attribute under your main stat like Strength, Intelligence or Piety.

Along the way, you should try to acquire any spellbooks from Queequeg and pick up potions once in a while like Cure Posion, Cure Lt Cnd and Healing. It will take sometime before you can do your own Cure Poison so just be careful of that situation. Obviously, you want to prioritize your armor and weapons over healing items (unless you are poisoned but at an early stage you should just reload). But I would continuously stock up on healing items and keep them in my swag section.

The hardest encounters early on are the secret Brigand tavern (Captain Matey), the killer boss rat (Fat Rat) and the Zombie in the tower. Some of those might have extra mobs (especially if you decide to put the game on a harder difficulty). So it might take you a few attempts to down those encounters. Along the way, you can use the Belfry rope spot to get mobs of bats to assault you for early easy XP. I think some people use that area to grind until level 5 or 6 because the encounters are reliable.

Lastly, I did read how some people might even change around level 5 just because it’s very easy to get through the first 5 levels, especially if you use the Belfry trick. The main thing is that if you plan on something like this, once you’ve settled into what your real starting build is, you should not swap simultaneously (outside of the initial entry into the game). Being able to level up separately for each character makes the fine tuning of attribute upgrades much easier. If you save a character or two for a later stage class swap, I would suggest waiting until you’re in the Dwarf Mine so you can grind next to the fountains. For instance, you might consider using that point in time to swap your Mage to Bishop. I would evaluate my situation based on how much healing I’d need at that stage. If my Valkyrie is doing fine in the 4th spot, then I would wait a little longer to do the class swap, possibly switching around level 13 so you can race to get the more powerful spells like Nuclear Blast or Astral Gate, which comes in really handy once you arrive at the River Styx. Just know that once you lose your main Mage, you’ll be limited on the spell level you can cast your spells at. So by then you should make sure your Bard can handle secondary AoE/group attack responsibilities.

The post Wizardry 6: Mapping Out A Min/Max’d Starting Party for A Hardcore Experience appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

It’s actually pretty simple. What you need to do is create a new Collection with an array structured to match your collection that you want to expose to your select drop down. Then you use the merge method on the Collection to combine the two. Here is an example:

$items = collect([['id' => null, 'name' => 'Select Your Item']])->merge(MyModel::all());

Notice that I start the collection with the item that I want to be at the head of the array I intend to pass into select. Also, note that this item is in a double array since you’re essentially merging one array of key/values pairs with another coming from your lookup table.

There might be other ways to handle this. But this seemed pretty straight forward.

The post Laravel: Adding A Default Message to a Select Drop Down with Eloquent appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The big Ad Blockers basically are some form of html cleanser that removes pieces from a page or censors URLs based on some rules you use. If you ever open up your preferences, you’ll see a really crappy UI that looks like this:

If you notice the right side, you’ll see a huge list of green items. Those items are whitelisted sites and other expressions that typically come from the subscription you get on the left side of the interface. Unfortunately, from the UI there is no easy way to edit this list (and I’m certain they do this purposefully) outside of just individually unchecking each of those boxes.

The problem is that if you examine that list closely, you’ll notice some very shady sites, despite the fact that supposedly this thing ought to be blocking these sites. Yes, ad blockers with whitelisted sites containing stuff from porn sites for instance. So obviously, you cannot trust these lists right off the bat. It is up to you to modify them.

Although you can edit the file directly, most of the time it’s pretty clunky and not error proof without understanding the basic format. A slightly more tedious yet safe way I do things is through blocking items that I see on a site. The real problem is that even if you try to knock out all the whitelisted items, you can’t be 100% sure that what you’re blocking is legitimate or not. You might accidentally block a CDN that contains the CSS for a site and make the site unusable. So the task at hand does require an eye to attention.

Usually, what I’ll do when blocking items is that I’ll go to a website and open up the blockable items. You can do this through clicking on the Ad Blocker icon, which should produce a submenu like this:

After that you can click on the “Open blockable items” line item and start to go to work. Doing that will produce a window at the bottom of the page and show you tons of URLs like this:

Notice the mixture of colored text. The most important things you should start scanning for are green items. These are whitelisted. If you start seeing odd ball ads floating around that dismay you, you need to disable the filter on them and then try to block them. Here’s an example:

Now, comes the slightly more complex part. When you disable the filter, you can click the “Block this item” which will open up a new window like this:

So in this situation, I have several options listed by the radio items. Depending on the item, I might have to block a whole URL or block part of it. My rule of thumb is to block any URL that is not the same as the website you are visiting. Obviously, I don’t do this all the time. Sometimes, a website will use critical plugins like discus for comments. If I want to use those comments, I cannot block the external site. However, if you see words like “ads”, “omniture,” “pixel,” “tracking,” “beacon,” etc., then those are pretty much automatic red flags for stuff that either are whitelisted or stuff that haven’t been placed into the filter and you should probably block to avoid being tracked.

While that might take care of some of the basic external sites, you still might end up dealing with Javascript, popups and trackers that originate from the site in question. Most are loaded onto a CDN (content delivery network) which is used to make the page load faster. Now, this generally is a good thing but depending on how the site uses Javascript, you might have to block parts of the CDN too.

So this is where it gets really tricky. Generally, when I go to look at things I can filter, I filter my filters with the “js” search option. What that does is limits only the files and directories with the “js” letters to be found. Most Javascript files are named with the .js extension and stored under directories named with js, scripts or javascript. And the reason why I try to block these files is because these are the ones creating the annoying popups.

Here, basically, you want to try to write a rule that takes care of these files. Most of the time, the ad blocker rule will figure this out. However, because of these CDNs and the way companies might shrink files down with a special build process, blocking one directory might not be effective enough for your next visit. Sometimes you might get a file located on a CDN where one of the directories is named with a timestamp (which is essentially either a year-month-day-hour-minute-second naming convention or some other form to force your browser to refresh the cache with these files if they add new code to it). Also, the CDN might have different names too like a0.rackspace.com, s3.rackspace.com. Because these CDNs are built for redundancy (meaning if a bunch of servers go down they can fail safe mechanisms that will switch your location), you have to block a certain part of the CDN name.

So a complex rule might look like:

||rackspace.com/*/omniture/*

What this rule says is block anything beginning with the URL rackspace.com, be located in any directory matching up to the omniture keyword and block everything in that directory. In short, you would block the whole omniture directory on the CDN (where omniture is a tracking/analytics company).

But why block just the js files? Why not block more? The problem is that if you block too much, the site might become unusable. For instance, you might accidentally block .css or font files that make the site’s design workable. So you should never block those things, especially if they come from the site itself. The main thing is that you want to block the functionally annoying parts, which tend to originate from Javascript.

Now, I know people will say, “Doesn’t that hurt the website in question with regards to revenue that they might receive from ads?” Yes, which is why I will say that you should do this at your discretion. If you really want to support a site because they produce great content, block as little or as much as you want. Click on the ads on the site to demonstrate your support.

However, I will also say that websites should become more focused around user experience. Right now, the conflated tracking and 3rd party crap has bloated most websites to the point of becoming unusable. The constant popups, autoplaying/max volume videos, etc. are all horrible user experiences. Worse yet, many of these sites that claim to be content sites actually do not have great content to start. Instead, most of the worst sites are nothing but click bait sites which should be shoved back into the earth, their staff fired and sent to the sun as a science experiment for the betterment of mankind because these sites only pollute the internet with their garbage and stay afloat through nefarious means. If you hate ads and want to voice your opinion that reflect my own, don’t feel bad about helping to take these cancerous leech sites into the ground. There’s plenty of them and if one goes down, another five will spring up to replace it.

The post How to Properly Use An Ad Blocker appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Motivation

First, what is the motivation for doing a seasonal character? Most people will argue that seasonal characters are geared towards streamers and pro-gamers. While that might be partially true for more hardcore style pro-gamers, there also is a reasonably sized audience for seasonal characters as well. The other major argument for seasonal characters is to establish leader boards in providing an even playing field by having people start from scratch.

So on the surface, a casual player might not really want to participate in seasonal game play. Are there any benefits? For a casual player, the main benefits for creating a seasonal character are:

• Seasonal Transmog
• Access to Season Only Items
• Large pool of public games
• Slightly higher drop rates (at least from what I’ve heard)
• Potential to play with streamers (most tend to play seasonal and seasonal hardcore)
• The general feeling of starting from scratch and experiencing the game as if you just purchased it

Also, if you are the type that only has a few characters that are maxed out, you might want to try a brand new class from scratch just to check it out. With the improved drop rate and early access to current season items, you might consider using this opportunity to give the seasonal game play a shot.

Leveling

So let’s say you decide to create a character. In this case, I would say that your best bet would be a demon hunter (either that or monk) since demon hunters are pretty strong overall. What are some things you can do to push forward in terms of leveling?

It really depends on where in Diablo 3 you are at with your non-seasonal characters. If you managed to complete the Campaign Mode, you will have full access to Adventure Mode as well as higher difficulties. The nice thing about having access to Adventure Mode is that you have more freedom to do different acts for bounties and experience. Also, you will have access to your followers. As a demon hunter, you can immediately grab your Scoundrel’s weapon, which does slightly higher damage than your current weapon and start going around the map.

I’ve seen people who use Act 1’s Halls of Agony Level 3 due to mob density and relative decent ease of killing those mobs. I suggest setting the difficulty to normal for the first 10-20 levels while you’re gaining gold. Pick up everything and check chests. Through Adventure Mode, you will be able to access each act’s merchants. So make sure that you periodically Town Portal to see what you can buy from time-to-time. Also, don’t forget that you can start crafting gear from level 4. You will want to focus on upgrading your Blacksmith as fast as possible. And if you manage to find weapons and helmets, don’t ever forget to add gems to them. For weapons under level 60, you should add the best Ruby you can either craft or find. And for helms, you should do the same so you can get bonus experience.

For myself, I don’t bother selling most gear and prefer salvaging everything, unless it’s a major upgrade. Also, I don’t bother upgrading the Jewelrycrafter nor Enchantress for a while, at least until my Blacksmith cannot be upgraded any further. The reason is that your Blacksmith will allow you to craft pretty decent leveling gear. In addition, once you’re around level 45, if you managed to have enough crafting materials, you might even be able to craft a decent level 60 weapon that has level reduction on it. By doing that you might be able to pump up the difficulty level by one, thus allowing you to gain a little more gold and experience along the way.

Also, don’t bother keeping low level gems around too long. The only thing that really matters is focusing on hitting level 70. Once you hit level 61, you will want to look for rares for upgrades since the gear will start scaling up much higher. The first thing you should really aim for is a decent level 61+ weapon with a socket. In addition, monsters will start dropping gems, blues and rares that will be very useful for crafting materials. So continue grabbing everything as much as possible so you won’t have to worry once you hit level 70.

Another thing that I do is avoid certain bosses until I’m leveling 70. I think Diablo and Malthais both drop a guaranteed legendary on the first kill. So if you want to make the best of gearing, you should save your first kills for when you hit level 70. In the case of Malthais, the most important thing he will drop is the Reaper Wraps Blacksmith plans. I think he won’t drop them before level 61 though, so again save that kill if you’re doing bounties for that moment.

Although I did mention using Act 1’s Halls of Agony level 3 as a way to efficiently level, you probably should only do that for the first 10-20 levels. After that, you will want to focus on doing bounties. The idea is that by the time you hit level 70, you should have a small collection of Blood Shards and Rift Keys. Once you hit level 70, you should start looking for a basic build and optimize that build around your gear. Lastly, you should try to make sure your gear, even if it’s all rares, has decent stats (e.g. rings with Critical Hit/Critical Damage, Legs with 2 sockets/Main Stat/All Resistance/Vitality, etc.) If you manage to hit over 300k paper damage and 300k toughness, you probably are good for master-Torment 1 normal rifts.

Early Gearing

You really want to be able to start pushing Torment 1 as soon as you have enough basic gear. The reason is that your main set items will drop in Torment 1 so you want to keep your chances up at all times. As a demon hunter, you should also try crafting a decent Reaper Wraps as soon as possible. Try to go for a Fire build (which I think is the best and easiest to gear) and make sure your Reaper Wraps have +% Fire Damage, Critical Hit (hopefully at 6%), Dexterity and Vitality. You’ll probably be starved for crafting materials for a bit so don’t go overboard if you can’t craft decent ones.

Another thing you should try doing is to hunt for a Ring of Royal Grandeur from Act 1. Again, try to do at least Torment 1. While doing bounties, start looking for a Goblin Rift. There’s some areas that pretty much have a goblin most of the time. While the spawn point can be random, you really want to find the Goblin Vault. In that manner, you can get the Boon of the Hoarder as soon as possible.

If you have enough keys, you can start hitting normal rifts. The main thing you’ll be on the look out for is the Trial Key. The reason is that you will want to fetch all the basic gems immediately. Also, Greater Rifts can yield some decent legendaries along the way.

Getting Legendary Gems

Once you get your first Trial Key, you’ll want to use it. But don’t bother fighting anything in the trial. Instead, Town Portal out immediately so you get a level 1 Greater Rift. These should be pretty easy and you’ll probably have excess time to clear it. Again, you do not want to kill the Greater Rift boss too soon. The reason is that you want to progress slowly so you can get gems and some legendaries along the way. With the three new legendary gems, you might have to progress to level 13 or so before you see all of them. In any case, make sure you only kill the Greater Rift Guardian with less than 5 minutes so you only get a single difficulty level more and can focus on getting you gems.

Boon of the Hoarder

The most important gem to get early on is the Boon of the Hoarder. I believe that Boon of the Hoarder will now drop from Greater Rifts as well. You want to obtain this gem because you can focus on earning gold early on as you do both normal rifts and bounties. Also, you won’t have to worry about the cost of upgrading gear and gems.

Broken Crown

The Broken Crown is a very good helmet pre-Marauder helmet because you can focus on building up a nice supply of gems early on. The Broken Crown drops the same gem that is socketed inside the helmet (it does not drop the same quality; that’s an important thing to note). So as a Demon Hunter, you probably will want to start accumulating a ton of Emerald gems, which means you should be equipping a green gem whenever you do anything besides Greater Rifts early on. What I did was use this item to first build up my supply of Diamonds (for cooldown reduction and all resistance), Emeralds and later Topaz and Rubies.

By combining the Broken Crown’s supply of gems with the gold you will accumulate through the Boon of the Hoarder, you should quickly be able to maximize your gem upgrading. Naturally, you should focus on creating the best Emerald for inserting into your weapon and then follow that up with maxed out Emeralds and even Diamonds for either your helmet (CDR) or other slots (for all resistance).

Mauraders Set

The most important items you will be hunting initially are your Marauders set. You should gamble for these whenever you have a chance. However, certain items have a higher percentage of rolling than others. Because of this, you might want to prioritize which pieces you should roll. This is my preference:

1. Shoulders
2. Legs
3. Gloves
4. Boots
5. Helmet
6. Chest

The reason for this ordering is the likelihood of being able to find the right pieces. In my case, I had to adjust my gambling slightly since I had a really tough time rolling the boots (eventually it came up but only after everything else). I ended up rolling a chest piece early on because I was attempting to aim for a Cindercoat to get more resource reduction, not to mention growing frustrated that everything except the Marauder boots were dropping.

Torment Difficulty and Gear Progression

As you accumulate your M6 pieces, you should be able to handle higher and higher torments. With proper itemization, elemental damage and a decent weapon, you can start doing T2-3 as early as having the 2 set M6 bonus. I managed to find an ancient Pus Spitter where I was able to handle T1 rifts reasonably well. But the minute I obtained my 2 set bonus, I felt the power shift quite a bit and I was able to hit T3 rifts without worry.

With the 4 set M6 bonus, you should be able to hit T4 reasonably well. Having your sentries fire multishot will allow you to hide behind corners and you should be able to kill things with decent efficiency. Soloing T6 though might be tough though unless you’re fortunate enough to have double Unity and your follower has the undying relic.

With the full 6 set bonus from M6, you can do T5 pretty smooth, even without a Bombadier’s Rucksack. T6 though starts to get painful unless your gear rolled decently and you have enough All Resistance and Vitality so that you can avoid getting insta-gibbed. By this point, you should be able to fair decently in public games and start enjoying a larger magic find bonus.

Assuming that you have your M6 (minus say a chest), your next focus should be on obtaining a Bombadier’s Rucksack and Cindercoat. Your weapon won’t be as important as long as it rolls good damage at this point. And you have some degree of free for your ring, amulet and belt early on. But once you want to hunker down and focus on doing some Greater Rift progression, you will need to really hunt for the last few items.

Greater Rift and Legendary Gem Progression

With the gear set up above, you should be able to handle anything between Greater Rifts 25-31. You might encounter some insta-gibbing for a while as you build up your gear, increase your damage and level your gems. So at this point, you’ll want to hunt for those uber rare items like a Fire base Stone of Jordan, double Unity, Witching Hour and a solid amulet (either Hellfire with a good passive like Awareness of a damage immunity amulet). You could aim to gamble for those items, starting with the belt slot. If you can’t find a Witching Hour, you might consider using a Harrington’s or Blackthornes.

Blackthornes are an interesting choice early on because of the rarity of Witching Hours. I’ve seen quite a few Blackthorne amulets drop though so combing those with the belt slot, you will be able to gain some damage resistance to elites and normal modes, which can be good early on.

Gem-wise, you will want to focus on Bane of the Trapped first because it does some of the best scaling damage and has a nice passive CC effect once it reaches level 25. After that, focus on Zei’s since the damage will scale and add a nice CC effect too. Now, with season 2 in play, you do have a few extra options with regards to gems. Most demon hunters end up choosing Bane of the Powerful for the elite bonus damage and increased general damage after slaying elites. I would argue that Bane of the Powerful is a good candidate to swap out for one of the new defensive gems. Here, you can try using the Esoteric Alteration or Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard. The idea is that if you find yourself too squishy then you can try to either avoid getting one shot or out healing the incoming damage by using either of these gems. I haven’t tried it yet but it does make an interesting possibility given the trouble I’ve been having with incoming damage.

Also, start gambling for ancient, better itemized versions of your M6 set. Don’t bother spending shards on amulets nor weapon though due to the outrageous cost for either. You could make an exception for a Stone of Jordan, but only if you have managed to find the rest of your basic gear. Now, the main things you want on ancients beyond ideal stats is higher dexterity, vitality, all resistance, armor and life regeneration. I feel that vitality is the real winner in many cases just because having higher health will help mitigate those one shot scenarios. You can get all resistance on your pants and boots, so I would value those if I managed to find some that I could reroll. I only mention armor and life regeneration here as well because they are the only other two stats where the ancient aspect makes a real difference. Although Life Regeneration might not be that great down the road, early on while you’re in the lower 100’s of paragon levels, it certainly helps, especially when you get hit and your potion is on cooldown.

Now, don’t worry too much about pushing too hard unless it’s a personal goal of yours. Do what you can and try not to destroy your keyboard (because you will get angry quite often). Even with poor gear, I still found myself being capable of doing Greater Rift 31 (I did have a fair number of deaths). I’m certain with double Unities and a few other key pieces, I would slide along easily. That part should take some time though so you really just need patience and perseverance to make this work.

The post Diablo 3: Seasonal Demon Hunter Tips for Casual Players appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Management Spends More Money Than It Makes

This is a classic tale that I learned from the early Dot Com years. There’s a clear difference between rewarding employees and sheer extravagance. One of the classic Dot Com bloopers involved a company, Pixelon.com, who had The Who (and several other known bands) perform at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for a $12 million price tag. Although that probably is the most extreme case for any company in the history that blew up, the lesson is very clear: if you’re seeing non-stop partying and the company has little to no revenue to make up for spending, then you should leave as soon as possible.

Lack of Transparency and Communication From Top Management

One of the key things that motivates me as a worker is understanding where a business stands, especially with its employees. Upper management, to me, should consistently provide as much business to their employees as possible whether good or bad so that they can make decisions for themselves in either helping to improve the business or finding a new spot if they disagree with the direction/vision of a company.

I think when upper management communicates through monthly town hall style meetings the general health of the business, it can really help improve employee moral. The main reason is that employees want to feel like they’re part of something larger and having town hall meetings give them privileged insight as to how the organization fares as a whole.

Companies that never have such communication in place and keep the ongoings of its business strictly to senior management risk alienating their employees because they effectively imply that everyone has no value. If a company is doing exceptionally well, they should obligated to share that to the employees so the employees feel that they contribute something back. If a company is doing poorly, management also need to be forthcoming to mentally prepare people in case a layoff occurs.

The thing is that honesty carries a company a long way. While society on a whole is moronic, people individually have this instinct for survival and it’s very easy to pick up when a business is unhealthy. The business might be making money, but the operational aspect might be low because of moral issues. In either case, people will figure this out quickly on their own. However, management needs to recognize this not just with themselves but share this with their employees in order to improve upon these flaws.

When a company flat out refuses to share information with its employees, then you cannot trust the people in charge as they will consistently see you far beneath them. And when the chopping block comes, they will have no issue axing you off the list quickly.

The CFO Quits

A friend told me this one. While a CEO can quit or move, a company that has a CFO and quits demonstrate very ill tidings. The idea is that the CFO sees all financial aspects, which at the end of the day is what matters more than anything for a company’s survival. If a CFO quits on their own accord, it usually means that the numbers aren’t adding up and they have pretty severe concerns about the long term prospects for that company.

These days after the Enron scandal, both the CEO and CFO, for public companies at least, are legally held responsible for ensuring to the shareholders of the truth behind the numbers. So the stakes are that much higher for public companies and CFOs as they could potentially be sentenced to jail a la Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Obviously to avoid such a disaster, a smart CFO will bail. That’s your cue to get out as well.

Management Refuse to Promote from Within and Hire Managers Above You

Any company that refuses to promote from within clearly should demonstrate that there are no career paths for you. Usually, in these situations, company’s want someone with a higher pedigree to add to the flash of their overly bulked up resume of people. Unless you enjoy playing the Game of Thrones, you pretty much are guaranteed to stay at the level you were hired at. In fact, most companies that I’ve seen tend to look at employees as being static once they hire them just because they want that reliability. If you’re overly competent at your job, don’t expect that you’ll receive the management spot. In fact your competency might mean permanency because they can’t replace you.

At least when you interview with a company, one thing you should ask is career growth in that company. Any competent company should have some sense of long term growth for themselves and how they can help shape their employees as they grow alongside the company. But companies that frown upon such questions in interviews or don’t hire based on them because certain individuals fear for their spots mean that they do not deserve your abilities. So avoid these like aidschat from Twitch.

Another major warning sign that the company management are incompetent and that your job is in jeopardy is when the company hires a manager above you….but never ask you beforehand to at the very least greet the person and give a second opinion. I recall meeting an executive from Monster.com years ago who told me something very profound regarding developers: management doesn’t trust them. Now, I think because of all the tragedy that surrounded various Dot Coms, developers in particular ended up earning a very bad reputation early on.

However, despite the fact that software is everywhere and rules us, people still inherently have a very poor view of developers. This might extend to many areas of employment. But when a company lacks trust in their employees, that reveals a great deal about the mindset behind management. First, it demonstrates a clear lack of experience in being able to hire properly. Second, it reveals a great deal of insecurity behind the people who hire. Perhaps, the management ended up getting burnt a few times and thought they learned by toughening up how they view workers. Instead, they simply look at name brands, schooling and other forms of name dropping and are impressed rather than figuring out the true merit of the person.

Then once this person slides in it’s pretty much too late. Rather than having a team agree whether or not this person is a good fit, a few select individuals will make that decision. More often than not, the situation never will pan out well because the people on the team didn’t have a chance to really weed the person out and instead deal with an ironfisted rule that will split the team and cause tension.

But the situation gets worse. Usually, the new manager type will attempt to build up political capital. What is political capital? Political capital is a term I learned during an interview when I spoke with ValueClick years ago. Essentially, it’s the amount of clout an individual has within a company to be able to sway people (usually upper management). Political capital usually is gained through earning the trust through quality work, years of endearment and the connections a person manages to create while at a company.

By definition then, a person starting a company virtually has no political capital. If this were a point system, I would argue that a new manager actually starts off with a negative amount because they are seen as authoritative figures and must earn the trust of the team in order to become effective. Most managers I’ve seen are pretty horrible; they often times have little to no real talent themselves, spend most times in useless, unproductive meetings and have a great deal of insecurity. That’s why they end up becoming managers as their only self-perceived effectiveness is in their ability to manipulate and/or bully others into performing their bidding.

However, some of the most insecure and ambitious managers will find out quickly that their toxic personalities have a negative stigma against a team because they weren’t the ones who built up the team nor the personality of that team. So to gain political capital points, they often times fall back on calling old friends and putting them into key positions to do all their grunt work. These managers never liked being questioned and only want yes-men to advance their careers as fast as possible. So if people of their newly acquired team disagree vehemently or even have a certain amount of clout with other critical people within a company, they will do whatever it takes to replace that member and/or silence them so that they can retain control.

Whether or not this type of manager succeeds is in the scheme of things irrelevant. But the real issue is that management allowed the person inside the company in the first place. Once again this points to larger organizational issues and things just won’t improve without massive change from above. More than likely, that will never happen, certainly not by you because you are the hired peon rather than the investor/stakeholder. So just leave and/or start looking before chaos starts to erupt around you.

Lack of Internal Recognition and Rewards/Perks for Employees

There’s a lot of bullshit articles floating around the internet these days about how passion should dictate everything about a job. Part of these bullshit articles started from Ted Talks where someone discussed how the productivity output differed between someone who was truly vested in what they were doing vs people who were provided material incentives for increasing their productivity. A lot of the productivity psychological analysis demonstrated was along the lines of creative type of jobs where passion dictated the increase in productivity whereas menial labor showed monetary incentives were favored.

But if you look at things it makes sense from a certain perspective. However, the problem with articles like these is that they end up becoming distorted and abused as evidence to allow management to continue to abuse employees by effectively being cheap. Instead, they convert the word “passion” into a euphemism to mean “free overtime,” which in reality is unethical and somewhat illegal.

I will be the first to admit that when I do something I like, people don’t have to pay me or give me anything because I love what I do. For instance, my writing is something where I can work on for hours because I enjoy it. The reality about jobs is that at the end of the day, unless you’re the owner of a company, a job still is a job. Never let employers manipulate you into believing otherwise. Unless you are dictating what you want to do, it’s a job. No amount of passion can ever replace the feeling of being a wageslave.

However, even with pay, a company needs to recognize and properly reward people rather than treat them as perpetual slaves. You don’t need something as remedial as an elementary school recognition program with crayon drawn personalized stamps of approval. Yet you do require verbal appraisal periodically.

And if a company does make good money, there should be no excuse to not have a poor environment to work in. If management are collecting the interests and not returning anything to the workers, then they don’t deserve to have you. Let them find some wageslave off in a 3rd world country and let their company fall to pieces once they find out that you get what you pay for in this world.

Your Job Stops Moving You Forward

Life is about learning and progress. Also, life is far too short to spend your time pretending you’re busy at a desk just to appease some asshole in accounting who wants someone’s butt in a seat within a set period. The worst thing though is if you feel that you’re no longer growing within a company and that you have nothing to do. Should you be worried about your job? Damn straight!

Imagine if you aren’t doing anything or growing and the company starts going downhill. Who will be the first people they will let go? Anyone who appears useless and not contributing to the bottom line. I know there’s what I like to call the Wally Syndrome (Wally is the Useless character from Dilbert) and it’s fine for certain people in this world who are content stagnating while collecting a paycheck. But if you came to my blog in the first place, you probably aren’t a Wally type in the first place. At any rate, the key in this matter is that you probably won’t be around for much longer one way or another. So either get a head start or be ready to receive that Pink Slip.

Upper Management Lacks Vision

This is pretty obvious but it can be tough to see in larger organizations. Usually, a mission statement at the very minimal is required and you can typically find that in a business plan or on the corporate website. But what’s more important is understanding how upper management plans to execute that vision. A good upper management team can articulate what their business is about (and this is why monthly town hall meetings are so crucial).

Even if upper management does not provide a clear mission statement, you can see over time whether or not there is a true vision that leads to better things for the company and most importantly, yourself. Once you start seeing odd pet projects crop up that no longer align with what the company you interviewed for, then it’s an almost sure sign of a dangerous ego involved somewhere. What makes these pet projects dangerous is that they are vague and are more for the “passion” aspect rather than bottom line or practical.

Worse yet in cases like these you end up doing a death march. Death marches are anti-patterns in that they signify long hours without any relevance. The end product isn’t articulated well and probably cannot be sold by the sales team. Yet the person pushing for the product won’t hear any opposing views because it’s their baby. So whether it’s feasible or not, you’re forced to go along with it.

But here’s my test at the end of the day to see whether a company and/or product has a true vision. Ask whoever is in charge this question: “What does it do?” The person must answer the question within a single sentence (no run-ons allowed). If they cannot do this in a concise manner, that means they have no idea how to explain it to their investors and their sales team cannot do much better.

Over in Hollywood, movie producers follow a similar method when evaluating scripts. Pretty much you need to summarize a script within a single sentence. If the idea blows, they simply will chuck the script, like a million others, out the window. If management cannot precisely explain what the company or product does, that means they’re winging it. Being an entrepreneur and failing are fine for the entrepreneur. But it is not fine for the worker who wants to get paid and retain their sanity.

Management Are Unwilling to Listen to Others

Vince McMahon runs the largest pro-wrestling company in the world. Although he brands it as “entertainment” these days, any long time pro-wrestling fan will know what McMahon has done for the business of pro-wrestling. Whether you agree upon his specific methods or not or his current and past products are irrelevant in this discussion because at the end of the day, it’s undeniable just how successful and powerful Vince McMahon is.

One key thing about Vince McMahon is that early on he surrounded himself with people who were smarter than him or at least those he could trust enough to delegate aspects of his business to. Certainly, McMahon has his moments of stubbornness as documented in numerous accounts from insiders. But many people will state that at the end of the day, he still listens.

The thing is that management do not have to follow your suggestions. They don’t have to do anything for you. But at the very least they should hear what you have to say, especially if it concerns improving their business. Some of the best businessmen are those like McMahon who have managed to figure this out early on and surround themselves with people who are smarter than themselves in certain (or maybe all) areas. This demonstrates that the person (or people) in charge have trust in others to help them build their vision and mold it.

Management who are insecure refuse to allow criticism and hide themselves in their offices are the worst types. I recall working at a life insurance company in Japan how we hired a CIO. For the first month, he stayed inside his office and refused to talk with anyone who wasn’t at a high managerial or executive level. I felt it was quite offensive because it showed that more than likely he was over his head and looked down upon everyone as subordinates rather than trying to figure out how things currently operated and spend enough time making allies. And of course he brought in his cronies down the road too and put them into managerial spots. That didn’t last long nor did he. But he made out like a bandit long enough while those in tech suffered.

I feel that given his circumstances of not being a tech person nor someone with the business domain knowledge, he should’ve been spending his time at the very least, speaking with everyone to find out what they were doing and how the core systems operated in relationship to the business. Instead, he went out and got yesmen to feed him irrelevant information because they too had no clue. In the very least, a good executive here would allow for criticism and create forums to allow everyone to offer their insight and create a discussion on how to improve things rather than using a cheap managerial tactic to build a fake army.

Death March, Health and Personal Reasons Off

I talked briefly about this behavioral anti-pattern. But let me provide an anecdotal to back up what I mean by this. Back in 2001, I returned from Japan to a changed economy in America. Gone were the well paying mod_perl jobs, all replaced by Python and Java. However, being foolish in believing that the Dot Coms would be around forever and having better monetary opportunities, I found myself instead in debt, struggling to find work. So I ended up taking an 80 hour/week job where I toiled for a few months working from approximately 2pm until 3am every day, including weekends.

At a certain point, I felt the insanity roll in and I began questioning my existence. Already I had worked at another job where I felt that management had little clue about the burgeoning internet and here, while my manager was far more competent on the tech side, he was too young and unable to negotiate for a balance to our awkward work weeks. Unfortunately, because the market was so bad, the management knew they could manipulate us into these long hours.

For myself, the thing was that there was this girl, Yumi Fukawa, a former pro-wrestler, whom I had purchased an airline ticket for as a retirement gift (I had an unhealthy obsession for Japanese female pro-wrestling back then). She had visited my friend in the Bay Area and I intended to visit them as I was forced to miss her show due to my work schedule (and debt). She would only stay up there for a few days but the great thing would be that I had the opportunity to hang out with her and my friend personally and closely. That meant the world to me back then.

Of course, management didn’t see it that way.

Management only cared about making money and didn’t care whether I was sick, dying or in serious trouble. They only cared whether the product was done. For myself, anytime you cross the line between personal and business then you’re out. It’s that simple. Anytime a business only cares about money, you’re out. The people in charge aren’t human and couldn’t care if your family were all on their death bed.

In this case, the real issue wasn’t that I went to see her. I went to see her on a weekend. My personal time off that I did not receive for a few months straight. Sure, there are people in this world who probably work far more. And for whatever reasons if they have no issue they can continue. But for me I had to ask myself, “Is it worth the risk quitting and getting into worse debt while scrounging around for my next job?”

Well, the part about the speech on caring whether I was dying sick in my bed was exactly what I heard over the phone. It was obvious that there would be no light at the end of the tunnel with this group. On top of that, one of the partners left so that demonstrated bluntly how much confidence he had in the business.

But no matter what the issue, never compromise on your health, sanity and personal life unless you get something back that makes the experience worth it. Make people write it in blood if you have to but never compromise on the quality of your life because they won’t give you a dime if they had that option.

Nothing Left for You

When you sign up with a company that you call a career move, it’s far different than when you sign up for a job. The career move means you have plans to move upward or that the company provides something that aligns with what you’re about. In short, you should think of working at a company as a partnership. You both mutually have need for each other and hence you should be together.

However, when that thing is taken away from you, should you just sit around twiddling your thumbs collecting a paycheck? Again, this boils down to life being far too short. Yes, I’m an idealist in that I want the best possible environment for myself. I demand that quality because I know no one in this world will ever give it to me. I have to claw, scratch, bite, kick someone’s nuts in to get every little scrap thrown at me. But at least I make the attempt.

Most people are content not even getting scraps but the moldy remnants of feces. How can people look in the mirror and find that acceptable? I think this attitude is why this world sucks. People don’t demand that much from themselves, especially about their own standard of living. You don’t need to live like a rockstar but take pride in what you do and have a purpose every day you step into your office seat.

Recently, this happened to me as well. Sure there were other factors playing a part in my decision but the main thing is that I had no purpose anymore. Before that happened, Robin Williams committed suicide via hanging himself. For me, Robin Williams was a childhood hero, one of my two favorite comedians and top actors of all times. How could a person who inspired so much love and had very few people say spiteful and negative things get so depressed that they would want to leave this world? He had everything to live for but chose another direction.

Every day since a certain person joined our team, my health and sanity were depleting. I was comfortable prior to that point and allowed myself to get a little complacent. But at the very least I had a purpose in showing up to work every day. I wanted to build the app I originally was hired to create and the idea that it would be showcased and used for a good cause gave me a lot of pride in my work. Maybe it was far from perfect but anyone in software understands that perfection is something you strive for but never achieve.

Then this person walked in one day and announced that my project was canned. I knew what would happen next. Yet it was a slap in the fact in the light of all that happened. How could I show to work knowing that I effectively have lost the purpose for showing up in the first place? I could swallow my pride and hope that the worst would pass quickly.

Yet I’m a veteran in this industry and experience has taught me that swallowing ones pride only leads to the slow decay of one’s sanity. As a single person, I have no obligation to anyone outside of myself. So with that in mind, I left. And after I left I was the happiest person. At home, I’ve been working on my novel, playing Diablo 3 and working on my blogs. Sure I have no income pouring in at this very second, but the mental contentment of being able to write something that has been burning at my soul makes this experience worth it.

The thing is that life is just too short to worry about a paycheck. You have to live life for yourself, not for the whims of others. Once people stop respecting your life you should stop respecting theirs and move on to higher grounds.

The post Signs of When You Should Quit Your Job appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Watch live video from conark on TwitchTV

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In general, references are ways to point to a segment of memory in a language. You aren’t exactly pointing to the variable itself when dealing with references but its memory aspect. This idea is an especially powerful concept when dealing with the key concepts in computer science of passing variables by reference and passing variables by value in function calls.

When you pass a variable by value, you are making a copy of a variable onto the memory stack. What this means is that the variable being sent into a function will not be altered during the processing of the function as the original variable value is stored elsewhere. Pass by reference on the other hand implies that you will be pointing to the variable’s memory pointer when you send it into a function. In a way, it implies that the variable’s actual value may change during the processing a function.

Both of these ideas deal with two more concepts in computer science called scope and side effects. Variable scope defines more or less the lifespan of a variable. Most command and OOP languages support the idea of a code block where variables within that code block effect everything within that segment. So in PHP, that usually implies the variables within brackets, function calls, objects, etc. When you use a function, you’re attempting to limit the side effects of conflicts of variable naming by creating its own code block. That way you can have variables with the same names without side effects.

Side effects occur when variables have unexpected results from improperly scoping a variable. That’s why people tend to despise global variables (and why the superglobal variables in PHP were deprecated) since you can produce a wide range of effects if you do not manage your variables properly. You never want to lose control of the environment because of poor scoping.

When it comes to references, you will deal with side effects as you’re essentially “allowing” a function to mess with the internals of a variable in pointing at its memory location. If you do any type of assignment in that function to the referenced variable, you will ultimately change the value of the original variable. In examining this logic then, the question becomes, “Why would you EVER use references if you can screw things up?”

The answer lies in what you’re attempting to accomplish within a function. Most of the time, pass-by-value is perfectly acceptable since you’re more than likely using the variables passed into the function to produce something else. However, pass-by-reference makes a HUGE difference when you deal with extremely heavy objects and large data sets like arrays. Let’s take an array of 1 million rows from a database as an example. The memory usage for that data structure would be immense as is. However, let’s say you need to process that array. If you were to pass the entire array by value, you would make a duplicate copy of that array on the stack. That would easily eat up a ton of memory unnecessarily. Instead, you could pass the array by reference so you avoid the copy.

Now, let’s take this example further and say you want to rebuild the array. For instance, let’s say your function just needs to add a single key to each of the rows (given that the each row might be represented as a plain PHP object or array). You have two methods to handle this. One is to rebuild the array from scratch in the function, which again would imply essentially duplicating the entire data structure in memory by creating a new variable. Or you could loop through that array structure using a reference without rebuilding the structure and alter the row in each iteration. Example:

$list = $db->getVeryLargeDataStructure();
makeAsClean($list);

function makeAsClean(&$arr)
{
  foreach ($arr as &$r)
  {
    $r['is_clean'] = 1;
  }
}

As you can see in the example above, you do not have to pass back the entire array nor recreate it. Instead, you simply are manipulating the original array then further modifying the rows within the for loop. If you see some of the array functions in PHP, you’ll notice that quite a few of them do something similar.

Even if this code might appear clean, you still have to be extremely careful of side effects when using references. And sometimes the situation may not necessarily be clear. Let’s modify the above function with the following code:

function makeAsClean(&$arr)
{
  foreach ($arr as &$r)
  {
    $r['is_clean'] = 1;
  }
  foreach ($arr as $r)
  {
    $r['is_dirty'] = 1;
  }
}

In reality, the last item in $arr will also contain an array with the key ‘is_dirty’ despite it seeming as though the foreach loop might scope the $r in the second loop as being local to that loop. In order to ensure that you don’t have this unintended side effect (even if the code looks odd here), you’ll have to use the reset function:

function makeAsClean(&$arr)
{
  foreach ($arr as &$r)
  {
    $r['is_clean'] = 1;
  }
  reset($r);
  foreach ($arr as $r)
  {
    $r['is_dirty'] = 1;
  }
}

Now, ‘is_dirty’ will not be appended to the last row. But hopefully, this little blog can help some people with a few of these core concepts.

The post PHP: References, Scoping, Arrays and Function Design appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

.append( $( "<a>" ).text( item.label ) )

I did something a little different where I wrote out my html. But my code started like this:

.append('<a href="#" class="food-row-link>">

What I discovered was that upon clicking the link, I would be redirected to the base url of the site I’m developing. Although I attempted to override the select event function, I still had issues preventing the reload. What I discovered was that by putting the href=”#” attribute, autocomplete would use the value in the href, even after processing the select event. I attempted to correct this behavior through further overriding the event on the link by coding something like:

$('a.food-row-link').click(function(){
  return false;
});

However, that did nothing because the autocomplete function was overriding mine. In the end, you just have to make sure that unless you want the page to redirect, never to put the href attribute on a link in the line item for autocomplete. Removing it allowed the event to not be redirected and behave as expected with the select event that I defined.

The post jQuery: Autocomplete Issue with Select appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Once you finish the starting dungeon, the world opens up and you have any number of paths to take. Unless you do something like importing all your guys from Throne of Bhaal, most likely you’ll be around level 6-8. Some areas will be vastly more difficult than others so part of your path needs to take into account your ability to handle situations both from your party level and your gear. While there are other walkthroughs available, most focus just on the area rather than defining a good path. I want to define what I feel is a reasonable path to take.

For myself, I immediately do the circus tent quest in Waukeen’s Promenade. Usually, after the starting dungeon, I’ll sell off any excess equipment to try to make some extra gold then head directly into the tent (I do stop off to talk with the child outside). The tent is pretty small and has a few items as well as giving you Aerie. If you are going single player mode and lack a mage, pretty much picking up Aerie will be a high priority.

After completing the tent, you can go to the inn at the north part of the promenade to face a small encounter on the 2nd floor. You’ll get a few items but this fight isn’t too tough yet. But at least, you should get a few decent pieces of armor, a cursed sword you can sell for some gold and a magic item or two you can use.

From here, the only area opened up is the Slums. After talking to the Shadow Thieves guild representative, it’s best to do the Copper Coronet slavers quest and finish up cleaning up the slavers in the area. Just be careful of traps when you get into the slavers’ hide out and make sure someone can deal fire damage to the trolls.

Here, you’ll have a ton of avenues as you collect gold to side either with Bodhi or the Shadow Thieves guild. Obviously, if you’re good or even neutral, you’ll probably want to side with the Shadow Thieves. You can go to the Docks to initiate conversation with them but I tend to hold off for just a little while. While in the Copper Coronet, you might encounter a few NPCs who offer to join you or start a few quests. It’s up to you and your party size to choose whether or not to accept them into your party. But the Firkaag quest is something that I leave along for a small period.

In my case this time around, I ended up trying to pick up Nalia but was forced to drop her because I wanted to get something off of Minsc. Unfortunately, that caused me not to have an option to leave Nalia at the Copper Coronet and I had to pick her up at her keep. In turn, I got ambushed a few times while traveling between the City Gates and her keep. That gave me a little more equipment as well as the quest that leads you to the Docks District.

So for me, I ended up doing the Docks District once I picked up Nalia from her stronghold area. But I did not immediately start that quest line (mostly because I wanted to earn more gold and buy a few magic items from Bernard and the Adventurer’s Mart). When you do the Docks District, the quest line you should focus on is the Harpers Hold one. It’s pretty easy with one major fight that should not be too difficult at your level. You will gain a few decent items on the way, including a helmet to protect against charms and good bracers for a mage.

With that quest line out of the way, I tend to do the Bridge District next. If you’re into efficiency, you probably can (and should) do the Graveyard District first. The reason is that you can pick up a quest that leads to a small fight in the Bridge District that is pretty easy. Also, you might want to hit the Temple District to start the paladin quest in the Bridge District. This will allow you to focus on clearing as much as you can at your level while in the Bridge District.

First, I do the Tanner quest since the fight is easy and you can get a decent reward or two. Then proceed with the quest with the red cloth that you find from the guy who was buried alive in the graveyard. And finish it off by visiting the north eastern corner where you encounter the paladins. The paladin quest requires some level of going back and forth between the Bridge and Temple districts. But the fight with the rogue paladins is pretty easy and gives you a small reward at the end.

At this point, you can go to the Government District to pick up the Valygar quest while encountering both Viconia and Jan. Those two NPCs will give you a small amount of experience. But the main thing to keep in mind at this point is that you’re mostly focused on simple tasks that are building you up for the harder ones.

Here, we encounter an interesting cross road because you probably don’t have enough money to get really high end gear, but you’re still not powerful to do the real difficult quests. I tend to stay away from the main quest line until I complete all of the non-main storyline quests, including parts of the Watcher’s Keep. Nevertheless, at this point you have several areas to choose from at your level: Nalia’s Stronghold, Trademeet, Renal Bloodscalp and Mae’Var’s guild, the Sewers and the search for Haer Dalis’ or the Planar Sphere quest.

It’s really a tough choice at this point because they all are viable to a degree but a few might be easier if done in a certain order. My suggestion is to do Renal Bloodscalp’s quest. The idea is that they’re more errand based and fairly easy while providing good experience and gold. The only difficult part of this quest line from my memory is the final fight but you don’t really need any special equipment to handle the thieves. That makes this quest a good choice. Once you finish, you should have enough gold to buy a few more items, including a weapon imbued with fire.

Now, you can do either Nalia’s Stronghold or Trademeet. I tend to favor Nalia’s Stronghold more because you get a kick ass weapon in the Flail of Ages, which is probably one of the best long term weapons in the game. Also, Trademeet requires that you have a good druid. Although you can use Cernd, I prefer Jaheira. At this point, she might still be a little weak so Nalia’s Stronghold might be able to get her a level or two.

Certainly, after Nalia’s Stronghold, Trademeet becomes a pretty good zone to hit. There’s a few good items that you can get from this area, including bracers of archery, a flametongue, a decent scimitar +2, some good shields, an awesome druidic staff as well as being able to purchase Robe of the Archmagi and the Belt of Inertia (once you end the Rakhasha problem).

With the equipment and experience from that zone, you should have issues tackling the sewers and rescuing Haer Dalis’. The hidden wizard area where Haer Dalis’ is held captive is pretty simple; the sewer itself can prove to be a bigger challenge with the fight in the top middle section. After clearing it though, you’ll have better items and will be ready to deal with the pocket plane follow up encounter.  That area can be a little trickier since a few of the fights provide one shot mechanics that are a little frustrating. But the gear (namely the Boots of Speed and Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise) make that area totally worth diving into.

At this point, you should have plenty of gold and a few decent items, which, again opens up even more possibilities. I say that doing the Planar Sphere quest makes the most sense. The experience is very good and you will get the Gauntlets of Ogre Power among other items. Definitely, you should do a few of the small Umar Hills quests en route to Valygar (heck, do them before some of these other spots). But beyond the halfling fight, you shouldn’t have too many issues in the Planar Sphere zone.

At this point, you might be hovering between levels 10-13. If you are then you can start thinking about the really high level pre-main storyline areas you want to hit. Those include Fiirkag’s Challenge, the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, the Shade Lord Dungeon, the Slave Lord’s compound, the mind flayers’ mini dungeon in the sewers (which depends upon you completing Fiirkag’s challenge), the Demilich, the Twisted Rune and the Watcher’s Keep. Each of these can be pretty tough, but completing one of them will certainly give you a huge advantage to the rest.

I think the Slave Lord’s compound is pretty good as a first step. There’s decent equipment (especially for those who use katanas) and it’s pretty fast (either you succeed or you die). After that, I tend to do Fiirkag’s Challenge. I would suggest talking to the Shadow Thieves’ guild head to get the Amulet of Power as there are a few level draining specimens in the dungeon to Fiirkag. But most of the instance is pretty easy overall with the exception of the beholder, the NPC fight and, of course, the red dragon. The red dragon though CAN BE simplified in doing the cheap ass cloud kill tactic. But once he’s dead, you get the holy avenger and red dragon plate, which is possibly THE best armor in the game. Not to mention all the other goodies too.

At this point, I suggest hitting the first level of the Watcher’s Keep. One great thing is that there’s a lot of +4 weapons in the Watcher’s Keep so doing most of it prior the main quest line will make you somewhat OP. But that’s part of the reason to handle that dungeon early on. The only level that really isn’t worth anything to be honest is the last one. But the others have pretty good equipment and will probably give you a few solid levels. You could spread out how you handle the Watcher’s Keep. For instance, just doing one floor at a time in between Shadows of Amn quests. But the first floor certainly is a must-do spot.

For myself, I tend to go down to level 4 and just finish up to the Githyanki. That way, I can get most of the useful weapons/gear without having to deal with a few of the more annoying encounters. Level 2 isn’t hard neither but outside of XP, I feel that it might serve more as a distraction. However, level 3 is definitely worth it just to acquire the Deck of Many Things among other items (I also go for the scimitar as it becomes a BiS weapon for Jaheira).

By now, you should be anywhere between levels 11-13, which means you can handle the vast majority of encounters in Shadows of Amn. Mostly, it’s a matter of obtaining gear and gaining more experience for the higher level spells. I think that the next best spot is the Cult of the Unseeing Eye. Here, you can start doing the quest line for the Demilich encounter (which has the best ring in the game). It will be tough once you hit the Beholder cavern but there are a few rewards worth getting once you finish this quest line.

After that, you might consider finishing up the main quest line just before you board the ship. The reason is that the vampire area, while posing some risk with a few undead encounters, for the most part is fairly easy. Also, all the quests leading up to the dungeon are pretty trivial. But one of the key benefits of doing the vampire dungeon is acquiring the Mace of Disruption. Once you get this weapon, you probably will want to finish up the quest from the Temple of Helm to upgrade it into a +2 weapon. I forget if the upgraded version protects you from energy drain, but either way it’s definitely worth the effort.

At this point, you should be a fairly potent adventurer with a reasonably high level party and armed for most encounters. So my suggestion is to whack the demilich and get all the liches in between for the best ring in the game. Also, do the hidden lich in the City Gates district so you can acquire the Daystar long sword. If you have a spare Rogue Stone, hit the bridge district to do the encounter which requires you to use the Rogue Stone to enter a different domain. If you can manage that encounter (which is tough), you can acquire the Staff of Magi. If you’re feeling up to the task, do the mind flayer area in the sewers to get the Hammer of Thunderbolts. Beware that this can be an area of supreme frustration, especially if you lack the potions which prevent the mind flayers from psionically assaulting your characters. Summoned skeletons and monsters along with cloud kill spells will make the area far easier though.

By now, you have two remaining non-main quest line areas to choose from: the Shade Lord’s Dungeon or the rest of the Watcher’s Keep. The rest of Watcher’s Keep is fairly challenging, including a few very tough high level encounters (namely Demogorgon). I would suggest aiming for the Shade Lord’s Dungeon as you should be used to handling lich fights and dragon fights. Not to mention you get another sweet piece of dragon hide that you can convert into some awesome armor for your thief.

In the case of the Watcher’s Keep, it really is up to you whether you want to finish the rest now, after the main quest line (where you escape the drow underground) or complete it in the expansion. For myself, I don’t see any must-have items in the remaining encounters so I tend to just leave it until I complete Shadows of Amn. The main benefit of completing the Watcher’s Keep early on is all the bonus experience to give you a leg up on the rest of the game. So it really is up to you how you want to play at this point.

By now, the only two other aspects are the main quest line and NPC quests. I think completing the NPC quests is a good idea. Not so much for the experience (because the amounts, outside of Valygar’s quest, are not tremendous) but mostly just to get them out of the way and never having to bother with any of the NPCs again. The bonus experience does help but once you hit levels 14+, you really don’t feel as much of an edge compared to early on while you were struggling. At levels 20+, the majority of what you’ll gain are the class specific abilities, which are okay but not spectacular in my opinion. Mostly, what you’ll be looking for at this stage is gear upgrades.

Even spells at higher levels are not as potent mostly because everything has either magic resistance or massive spell protections that prohibit you from using your strongest spells. Spell casters should focus more on defensive spells, buffs and abilities to strip away spell defenses as well as summoning. Offensive spells just don’t pack the type of punch you really would expect unless you chain them with something like contingency. But in order to get to that point, you pretty much need to strip away the spell defenses from a monster, which is why I don’t really find high level spells that useful compared to raw combat and magic items.

At any rate, I hope this guide is useful for those wanting to go through Shadows of Amn. Throne of Bhaal really does not require a guide in terms of questing routes because it’s more of a linear play style. Unless you decide to hold off on the Watcher’s Keep until Throne of Bhaal, you pretty much won’t have to do as much thinking in terms of where to go.

The post Baldur’s Gate 2: Best Route Quest Route? appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Before going into the guide, I want to preface this post by saying that the theme that Blizzard is attempting to aim for in this part of the expansion is the notion of “personal responsibility”.  Generally, the vernacular for this term is “GTFO the fire!” What you’ll see is that the mechanics in these fights themselves are not difficult by themselves but the combined effect along with how each person handles those mechanics are what can make or break most encounters. As a result, these mechanics do not favor people who AFK or expect to be carried; people who refuse to handle these basic mechanics do few people any favors and most likely will be kicked after being publicly humiliated.

Immerseus

Without a question one of the easiest bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar. Before starting the main thing you need to do is run around the room to avoid aggroing the boss. Too many people accidentally aggro the boss, which causes groups to wipe as you pretty much are required to spread around the room. Always make sure there’s an equal number of people in each section of the room with healing evenly spread. The tanks should be positioned at the two sides near where you entered.

Most of the encounter is a tank-n-spank situation where you’re beating on the boss. However, pools will spawn under your feet which you must move away from immediately. As a melee DPS, I tend to go from left-to-right, forming a row until one whole line is created. Once a row is generally filled, I’ll move back to the area behind the first row and proceed once more left-to-right. The big problem throughout this part of the fight is watching for lines that will knock you up in the air and dealing with the water spout that will knock you back. I really haven’t figured out how to deal with the water spout but I haven’t seen it do anything severe at the LFR level. So I just take the hit and run back.

Once you reduce the boss’ health to zero, he’ll dip down and those pools that were forming around you will coagulate. You need to avoid those (which is why I attempt to line them up row by row). Then comes to the second phase where two types of puddles shoot out: a dark blue one and light blue one. DPS goes on dark blue, stunning/slowing them if possible while healers focus on healing up the blue ones. As the fight progresses, you’ll see more light blue ones spawn, so for these if you have some healing capabilities, you might consider throwing them out to give your healers a hand. Whenever one of these hits the boss, it’ll cause raid-wide damage. So you can blow a personal defense cooldown, especially if your team is not on the ball with getting these down. You keep going through this process, whittling away at the bosses health until he no longer can reform.

The Fallen Protectors

In this encounter, you face the quest givers for the Golden Lotus with Rook, He and Sun. The main idea for this encounter is that they must die simultaneously (roughly 15 seconds of one another) or they heal up. The tactic for handling this fight is burning each one to 60% and 30% so that they perform a phase transition then carefully burning each one down equally. This can require some communication to ensure that people aren’t tunneling onto a single boss (which happens quite often).

The optimal order of burning these bosses is Rook -> He -> Sun and repeating for the phase transitions, which only will happen twice during the fight. The tank must ensure that Rook always faces away from the raid as he does a frontal cone style of attack. Once Rook is reduced to 60% and 30% he’ll phase transition where three adds are spawned in Sorrow, Misery and Gloom. Misery and Gloom should be picked up by the tank while everyone burns Sorrow first. Sorrow will essentially place a nuke (Inferno Strike) on a target that resembles a yellow/red flash spot with a timer. That person should stack with others so that if the group cannot nuke Sorrow down fast enough, the damage is split. Otherwise, it’ll pretty much one shot the target, which is the primary reason to get Sorrow down first.

Gloom and Misery are pretty interchangeable once Sorrow is eliminated. Misery might be the next priority since they put a ground effect called Defiled Ground which is basically another “GTFO the fire” situations. Since the tank will probably be running around kiting Misery, these areas will build up over time, thus making it worth getting her down fast. Gloom’s ability Corruption Shock is an interruptable ability. So in seeing it, you should try as often as possible to prevent it from being cast.

After all three adds are removed, you should focus on He. He is a rogue with a Killing Spree-like ability. That can make targeting him for melee a little frustrating at times. The main things to look out for is the poison he spawns on the ground and his gouge. The poison looks like a faint, olive-green puddle. DBM will tell you that you’re standing on it but it can be difficult to see at times with all the effects going out. Gouge is just like the rogue’s ability, but if you get it, the main thing to remember is to face away from He; it’s mostly a tank mechanic.

Once he’s at 60/30%, you’ll face an add called the Embodied Anguish. You have to burn this add down but the main thing to deal with is the Mark of Anguish. In LFR, if you get targeted, the easiest thing to do is pass it to one of the tanks. If you really hate someone, you can give it to them as well. It mostly is something that acts as a DoT and reduces their armor. But I think during this phase, He becomes untankable, which is why you can pass it to the tank in this phase.

Finally, you deal with Sun. She really doesn’t need to be tanked. However, she does have an AoE called Calamity which is unavoidable raid-wide damaging effect. She has another ability that can be interrupted called Shadow Word: Bane. However, this aspect isn’t as critical at the LFR level. The main thing for her is the phase transition where she goes into Dark Meditation, summoning a purplish bubble where everyone needs to stack under. While under this bubble, the tank needs to make sure Rook is still faced away from the raid (I’ve seen tanks point Rook towards the middle which is just plain stupid). Dark Meditation is a pretty easy phase as you’ll focus on two types of adds; one is inside the bubble and there’s one outside. Melee AoE the adds inside the bubble while range focuses on the one outside. Healers just need to heal through this phase.

Once that phase ends and the three are below 30%, you’ll begin the burn. Since all three have their health bars posted on the right side, you’ll want to keep on eye out on their percentage of health left. If any single one is significantly higher or lower than the others, you should switch to that add or off that add. When they’re around 6% or less, then you can safely burn them down.

Norushen

This is a fight where you must cleanse corruption from yourself before facing the Sha of Pride. You’ll face an Amalgam of Corruption where you’ll do significantly less damage because of the corruption you have. As the fight proggresses, two types of adds will spawn: Manifestation of Corruption and Essence of Corruption. The Manifestations of Corruption must be picked up by the tanks while Essence of Corruption are smaller adds that spawn around the room and have an ability called Expel Corruption which should be interrupted.

During the fight, you may (or may not) be summoned to phased version of the room where you face the two adds just described on your own in a “test”. Depending on your role, you’ll have different ways of handling this test. As a DPS, you essentially need to down the three adds. Whenever you kill an add, the equivalent will spawn in the room. Generally, the easiest approach is to focus on the large add then follow up by attacking the smaller ones. The reason for this is that the large add will create a pool that will make taking on the smaller adds more of a challenge. As you defeat each add though, you will remove the corruption. You have a limited time for this and you will be ported randomly compared to other versions of this encounter.

In the main room, chaos will slowly increase as more adds will be generated over time. Your job is to ensure that you get these down; in fact, if you’re not cleansed, there’s no point in focusing on the Amalgam as you won’t be doing full damage. So the priority is always adds over the Amalgam. While handling the adds, the Amalgam will periodically spawn a beam called Blind Hatred which rotates around the room. This mechanic is pretty easy to avoid but as adds spawn more frequently around the room, this can get hectic. Mostly, this part is difficult because the mechanic has potential to split the raid, making healing more difficult.

One thing that will happen which makes the encounter difficult are these blue/purplish balls around the room. If they are not picked up, then they deal raid-wide AoE damage. Tanks mostly will be the ones handling this but in picking up an orb, one will have their corruption increased by 25%. So your hard earned work in the test will be eliminated if you’re not careful.

Lust should be saved for the 30% mark where generally most people should be cleansed. Lusting at the beginning is absolutely stupid since you’ll be doing reduced damage. If you have problems with DPS, then you might consider saving your big cooldowns either for your personal test or after you completed your test. Either way, it’s pretty pointless blowing major cooldowns early on in the fight since your damage, etc. will suffer until your corruption is removed.

Sha of Pride

This fight is the reverse of the Norushen fight in that you must prevent yourself from gaining pride. You will have a bar indicating how much pride you gain throughout the encounter. There are a large number of ways to gain pride so you must attempt to avoid gaining pride too quickly as well as preventing yourself from giving others pride.

You’ll stack up in the rear, opposite of the entrance near where the axe is. You want to stack up for this fight as healers and DPS will gain a buff from Norushen called “Gift of the Titans” where 5 randomly chosen people will receive something like a mini lust. Gift of the Titans also prevents one from gaining pride, but it does have a limited duration. This is particularly important for healers, which I will come back to in a moment.

As you burn the Sha of Pride, you will go through a few encounters. The first thing that will occur is Self-Reflection where a pool will form under a few random players that spawn adds. When Self-Reflection starts people should start spreading, especially as the pool is formed. You don’t have to move very far but in LFR it’s just far safer to spread enough to avoid others’ pools. Once the adds spawn, you need to AoE these down. Over time, these smaller adds will build up in numbers, making the encounter more difficult as you get overwhelmed. Since there is no need for a tank swap, some groups will position one of the tanks with the group to pick up the adds. This part is optional and unnecessary, especially since there will be a prison on the other side. So having the tank on the opposite side solo the boss can make this encounter slightly more difficult.

The prison part actually occurs next. As long as the party is stacking on the axe while the tank is on the opposite side, then you’ll see the prisons spawn to the immediate left of the group and the far right. When these prisons pop up, two members of the group must step on the glowing yellow semi-circular parts. You can’t just have one person step on one semi-circle then move to the next; this must occur simultaneously. While the person is imprisoned though, that person takes damage and has their pride increased. For the far side prison, you can have one tank handle one of the panels. If you have a warlock in the group, you can create a Demonic Gateway to allow people to get to that side quickly. Otherwise, you’ll want someone without Gift of the Titans and who has a solid speed boost (e.g. feral druids, shaman, etc.) to help break the other prison. Under no circumstance should the people with the Gift of the Titans leave the group.

Once the prisons are free, you’ll face the Manifestation of Pride in the back. This is partly why you want to stack on the axe in the back. The easiest way to deal with the Manifestation of Pride is to have ranged nuke them down and/or have a death knight Death Grip it close to the group so that the melee doesn’t lose too much ground. As you nuke the Manifestation of Pride down, he’ll frequently cast Mocking Blast. These must be interrupted since they will not only damage a player but add 5 pride as well.

A little after the Manifestation of Pride is summoned (actually once the Sha of Pride reaches 100 energy), the Sha of Pride will cast Swelling Pride. At this point, the effect will depend upon how much pride the individual has. If you’re under 25 pride, you generally don’t have too much to worry about. Once you hit 25 pride, you’ll need to start to react accordingly. 25-49 pride causes a pool under the player. Pretty much you need to GTFO from the pool. However, in LFR since people are stacking around the axe, there’s a huge chance that people won’t move and these pools will not only cause damage but gain 5 pride.

50-74 pride forces the player to find a swirling pool with a green arrow (called Projection) to run to it and stand in it. If they fail, it’ll cause AoE damage to other players and add 5 pride. 75-99 is Aura of Pride which again causes AoE damage to other neighboring players and making others gain 5 pride for each hit. Finally at 100 pride, the person becomes a dark manifestation. They gain some buffs but if they are hit again by the Swelling Pride, they get permanently mind controlled and it’s pretty much game over.

So the easiest way to really handle Swelling Pride safely is just run away from the center as the Sha of Pride is casting it. I have no faith in my fellow LFR players and treat them the way I treat and view LA drivers; with absolute disdain and paranoia. Even if running the hell away from the center might cause a temporary DPS loss, it’s far safer than getting hit by these simple mechanics for people who refuse to pay attention.

Regardless, the encounter continues more or less the same way until the Sha of Pride hits 30%, where Norushen is slain, thus no longer providing the Gift of the Titans buff but removing everyone of their pride, giving you a clean slate to work with. At this point, your pride will increase no matter what every 10 seconds from the AoE going out. Here’s where people should lust and burn the Sha down. The main things to look out for at this point are the adds as they should spawn in massive numbers.

Either way, the name of this encounter is avoiding pride. Generally in LFR, I found that the real two problems are people not moving from the center during Self-Reflection and Swelling Pride. It’s just far easier to scatter when this happens then reform. The next aspect that causes high build up of pride is from healers who dispel without the Gift of the Titans. Combine that with the other two mechanics and you’re looking at disaster. So you’ll want to really look at those who have built up large amounts of pride and wipe the raid, then call them out to make sure they know why they’re getting too much pride. A lesser aspect is the prison near the tanks. Tanks and DPS who just tunnel might ignore the prisons, especially as things grow more chaotic. So never be that person who wants others to handle things for them. Keep an eye out for the other prison and be ready to issue out a movement booster. Dead people are no good in LFR anyway.

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